the world's smallest cake (only smaller)

 

[Pencil-eraser-sized, flourless, chocolate cake; hand-crafted aluminum springform pan; wooden cake stand and cover hand-carved by violinmaker Christo Wood, 2010]

 

 

J: What kind of cake would you like for your birthday?
B: The world's smallest cake.
J: OK, but what KIND of cake would you like for the smallest cake to be?
B: I don't know. What are my choices?
J: Choose one of each of the following: chocolate or lemon?
B: Chocolate.
J: Cold or warm?
B: Cold.
J: Cream or frosting?
B: Cream.
J: Heavy or light?
B: Heavy.
J: Perfect.

Fast forward three years...
J: What kind of cake would you like for your birthday?
B: The world's smallest cake... only smaller...

 

[Flourless, chocolate cakes sized 6cm, 3cm and 1cm in diameter; hand-crafted cake boxes and doilies, postcard invitation by Brandon Hinman, 2007]

For You, Beautiful

The concept of For You, Beautiful is to catalyze generosity in real time in people’s real lives. I invite attendees/participants to think of someone in their lives and to let that person know – this time in the form of a postcard stating "You may or may not know  you have the most beautiful _________."

For You, Beautiful works as a narrative with three stages. First, you are participating right now, as you read this, calling to mind the distinct beauties of some of the people in your life. The next stage of the work is you writing or filling out an internet form to send a postcard. You may do so here. The work ends with the recipients of the gift receiving them – whenever and wherever that may happen.

for you

 

 

 

The proffered future.

 

[mason jars etched with "enjoy -> refill -> pass on"; homemade squash soup, dilly beans, bircher muesli, pickled beets, black bean & corn salsa and red cabbage slaw; live sound feed, 2009]

 

Visitors to the gallery were encouraged to leave with at least one jar.

Every atom belonging to me as sure belongs to you.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as sure belongs to you.

– Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

 

Another artwork in the vein of and inspired by Even the highest mind and most rarefied spirit exist in a body that is made of earth.

(click image to add layers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7)

[drawings; popcorn grown in the dirt from P.T. Barnum's grave; 10 to the 8th power molecules of an Edith Piaf song (as sung by Edith Piaf); candles made by bees in Concord, MA (in proximity to Ralph Waldo Emerson's grave) in hand-crafted, paper packaging; 2005-7]

Even the highest mind and most rarefied spirit exist in a body that is made of earth.

"Even the highest mind and most rarefied spirit exist in a body that is made of earth."
– Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene

People lived on Earth for millenia before we were born and, grand or humble, left marks that influence our lives today. We owe our technology, our beliefs, our customs – our very bodies – to their lives, their work, their joys and suffering. Even the highest mind... is an homage to all who came before us and left behind wisdom that nourishes and teaches us; from this wisdom our own takes root and grows, for us and for those who come later.

[dirt gathered from a tiny number of the dead to whom my work pays tribute; plants; glass; 2005]

≥ Hippasus of Metapontum


*I have found many other sources since, but my original source was mathematician, Benjamin Stephens

Hippasus of Metapontum was the disciple of Pythagoras to whom is attributed the discovery that √2 is an irrational number, thus proving the existence of irrational numbers. Pythagoras could not disprove the existence of irrational numbers through logic but his beliefs would not allow for them or the implication that all numbers are not ratios of integers and thus absolute. It is also said that after √2 was proven to be irrational the Pythagoreans threw Hippasus of Metapontum into the sea to his death.*


≥Hippasus of Metapontum is an installation in the form of the √2 stenciled on the gallery floor in salt. The number, 1.4142..., begins at the gallery door and loops, ever tighter, as it draws nearer to the center of the gallery. I chose salt as my material because salt crystals are perfect squares and because Hippasus found his end among much salt. The installation asserts that this number (shown in the gallery to 159 digits) was, at his time and in his place, ≥ Hippasus of Metapontum. 

return

 

[5' 3" skeleton made from seaweed and sea sponge, super 8 film, 2005]

tree

[video, bark and dirt, 2004]

For years I have been investigating the body – exploring its surface, drawing it, painting it, replicating it – all in an attempt to capture a glimpse of a being’s own, particular numinous essence. I saw the human body and spirit as tightly-fused facets of one entity – the body as a spirit’s world all its own.

Then I lived with death. With the sloughing off of flesh – the cutting away of insides and falling away of outside and daily disintegration of everything that remained. Before my eyes the connection between the numen and its attendant body lost its tenacity. I realized that one could be a pile of ashes, hovering as if to crumble with a breath of air, while the other continued shining through its wasted host. Spirit became paramount. It, coupled with the temporal body’s implicit connection to the cycles of life on this planet became my foci.

And so, rather than trying to illustrate the human spirit illuminating its pristine bodily form, my work has become about creating physical metaphors for the visceral experience of being one with the planet physically, while at the same time transcending the human body’s earthen home. In doing so I am interested in using materials whose physical integrity mirrors the cyclical life of a human body: other living organisms. Equally fascinating as materials with which to work are the earth’s raw materials – the ever-present resources from which we come together and into which we fall apart: dirt, salt, wax, metal, sand, water, fire (light). These materials may be worked with alone or together. The only rule is that they must not be altered such that they can no longer return from whence they came.