Honoring fruits and vegetables by putting them on a pedestal never occurred to this Grandmother. It took an artist exhibiting at the Whitney Museum in New York to creatively come up with this idea. Darren Bader’s work stands alone in the gallery.
“Fresh fruits and vegetables—“nature’s impeccable sculpture,” according to Bader—are presented as formal objects on pedestals.” There are 20 pedestals, four rows of 5 pedestals each, with one fruit or vegetable on top. You have to see the picture of this creation to fully appreciate it.
Before the fruits or vegetables become overripe, museum staff removes them and replaces them with a fresh selection. The fruits and vegetables removed are then chopped, sliced, shaved, and diced into a salad, which is served to museum visitors. There is a set schedule for this event related to the art installation:
Salad-making and eating will happen at the following times:
Mondays 3 pm–6 pm, Wednesdays 3 pm–6 pm, Fridays 7:30 pm–10 pm, Sundays 3 pm–6 pm
You can see Darren Bader, fruits, vegetables; fruit and vegetable salad, not dated, and enjoy this experience at the Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014, (212) 570-3600 or on line at this link.
On the Whitney Museum website this is the artist’s only work listed. However, on a website called Artsy you can find other works by Darren Bader.
Here is the description of his work:
“Darren Bader’s artwork considers shifting notions of the art object, its contexts and production. “There’s this quantity/entity that people consider to be art, and my wish to [make] art involves trying to figure out the locus of this quantity/entity,” Bader has said. For his series “and/with,” the artist juxtaposes disparate objects and gives the works titles such as sugar and/with axe or kangaroo and/with lobster. Although laced with humor, Bader’s works are serious attempts to think through the processes of how a sculpture comes into being, and the contexts in which an object becomes art.”
Why did this Grandma not think of this concept? Take ordinary objects and make them the subject of interest in a special installation can be of great interest to grandchildren. Looking at one of the pictures of one of Darren Bader’s installation art pieces on Artsy looks like our youngest two grandchildren’s play area when they are done for the day!
We grandparents, laced with our own humor, can use Darren Bader’s artwork as inspiration too with and for our grandchildren. I think they will see the humor in such fruit and vegetable installation also on line if we are not able to make the trip to the Whitney Museum in New York City. We can buy some wooden pedestals at Michael’s for about $5 each. We and our grandchildren can make a fruit installation and the vegetable installation and try to convince our grandchildren to follow the lead of Darren Bader and the Whitney Museum and get them to create fruit and vegetable salads for the family, and maybe taste them themselves.
Then we can then we show them Darren Bader’s other installations on line. It will be easy for them to take their own collections of items and objects and create their own installations. We can photograph the installation creations our grandchildren make and on Shutterfly make metal art or paper art enlargements for their rooms or our homes. After all, anything our grandchildren do or say is precious. Who knew their messes might one day be the basis of potentially valuable artwork or a career!
Joy,
Mema
Comments