Tonight: Fancy Mud Pies

Like the swan touching down in the pea soup above, we're all aflutter today at Castle in the Air as we prepare for tonight's opening reception for "Fancy Mud Pies". The paintings hanging in the gallery really have to be seen to be believed, the animals and surreal landscapes shining beneath a layer of varnish, the edges of the unframed canvases raw, corners curling. The effect captures the wildness of the forest and the misrule of a busy kitchen. Here's how she describes her process:

I used rabbit skin glue to make these new paintings. Cooking it smells just like cooking Knox or Jell-O. The subject of the paintings is a combination of my childhood art: mud pies, and my grown-up art: Still-life oil paintings and the culinary arts. First I make the actual mud pies, running around getting Jell-O in my garden and mud in my refrigerator. Then I photograph them. I print the pictures in many tiles on "rice paper" that I have crammed through my desktop printer. The tiles are reassembled and bonded to crinoline fabric using rabbit skin glue. This becomes the canvas on which I paint the still life, changing and adding to the photograph. Creating the sense of beauty and chaos that is food.

We hope you can make it out to the gallery between 6 and 9 this evening to meet Cleo and help us celebrate the show's opening. (Read the full invitation here.) We're working with Fourth Street's newest restaurant, Zut!, to cook up some amazing treats that you won't find at just any gallery reception. See you tonight!