Thursday Kitchen: Playing with your food

There are crazy, bored, perhaps ethically-challenged people who create impressive, funny art from fruits, vegetables, and bread. There are a few children's books devoted to this sort of artwork and I recently found a site that has several recent-ish samples. Click Here to see the blog where I found the pictures below. I'm only including a few of my favorites from this site on today's entry.

I'm sure we could actually criticize this sort of art. With starving people in the world, maybe we should be offering this fruit to people rather than cutting little faces and things into them... but it's pretty impressive, isn't it? This batch of fruits and vegetables won't solve world hunger, but I'd like to think a donation of the proceeds from the books of this art to the hungry ought to exist.

That aside, I'm a big fan of this artwork... something that's not just a large dot on a canvas that can actually lift my spirits...

You've probably seen several images like this one. I just think it's so funny and yet, how practical! The artist made use of the bottom part of the orange to make this anguished, screaming face. He cut into the rind to make teeth and let the glowing fruit flesh represent the inside of a mouth. The other little oranges around the large screaming one are reacting in such a way that I can't tell if they're agreeing with the big orange or if they don't like the noise. And that sound is incredible- you know in your head that these fruits are not making any noise whatsoever, but the image definitely makes you hear yelling and gasping! It's just so interesting to me that anyone could take an ordinary fruit and turn it into recognizable facial expressions...

...or into a whole new creature. I guess this is some sort of cabbage or bok choy that someone has turned into gracefully swimming fish. You know, I just don't look at this stuff in the grocery store and think about fish. I probably will now, though, after seeing these lovely little coy.

This boule of bread means business! I like that the artist left the knife in the carved out teeth along with the crumbs that must have fallen out during production. Makes you want to believe that this "person" was inside the bread and determined to carve his way out!

It's just so sweet. I'm not big on pictures of puppies or little kids with puppies, but I'll say it about these fruits: it's just so darn cute. Who hasn't looked at the occasional oddly shaped strawberry and seen an image of some sort? I guess the artist has used black-eyed peas for the eyes, but I'm not sure what the other object really is... maybe a green tomato with the green pulled out? I like how it looks like the green face is puckered in embarrassment. So clever.

If you can figure out how the artist did this, please, don't tell me. This one is definitely one of my favorites. I like the idea of turning a fruit into something other than a face... into this surreal mix of a pear and a light bulb. If I had seen this as a kid, I probably would have wondered if that's how bulb parts are born... or if some pears grow things that can kill you if you swallow them.

I just wanted to share these amusing little pieces of art. These things make me smile no matter my mood. The whimsy of these transformations of the ordinary into the fantastic tickle me! It reminds me of things I used to do as a child... seeing images in those dotted and lined ceilings, wood grains, car fronts, etc. I hope you found them humorous, too!