#EFFit

And the other pile of pictures I’m sitting on was from Elgin’s first annual Fringe Fest.  I took part because if I look at everything as a no, I won’t do anything, right?  So here was a never before art show for artist who were not quite mainstream and I thought, yes, let’s see what can happen here.  I inquired, was (enthusiastically, I might add) encouraged to join in the fun, and after much daydreaming, I narrowed it down to my five favorite (that week) shapes.

I participated on a Saturday, first at the Family Fringe Fest, in a wee park in the middle of town.  Here’s my table…

I chose shapes and techniques based on what I thought would demonstrate my skills as an artist.  I don’t usually use that word self-reflectively, as art is usually in the eye of the beholder, but if I were to attempt to convince you that lovely things can happen on a cookie, as well as a on canvas or stage, I’d have to bring the good stuff.  So I brought:

Rockets—a composite shape, and the airbrushed water-color spots make the moons look nice and cratered.

Asters--A mini fondant cutter added extra petals to a sun shape, with multiple shades of yellow to accentuate the wavy contours of the petals.

Grapes—each grape was a piped dot, sugared in 2 shades of purple, or brushed with purple pearl dust.  They were gorgeous up close.  It’s also a composite shape that I made with a mini maple leaf and an upside-down Christmas tree.

Geckos—aqua blue, like a gecko isn’t, with little arabesque gold dots.  Scales are so unevolved, right?  These were the hot seller—they might be my favorite too.

And the fest was selling stenciled t-shirts with the twitter hashtag #EFFit.  So I made a few myself with a homemade stencil and some “paint splatters” with my airbrush.

When the Family portion ended, I packed up and finished up the afternoon and evening outside the Side Street Studio Arts, so incoming ticket buyers would see my wares.  I did well, but probably could have gotten away with simpler designs for less.  The kids wanted cookies no matter what they looked like.  But I wasn’t there to “sell” my baking skills, though I always bring them of course, I really did want to make this hard on myself as an illustrator—making them in volume, and making them awesome.  And I did it.  And if I have the space and time this summer, I expect I’ll be signing up again.  So see you on the fringe ;)

and then...

after the wine auction in September, i got an email from 3 Vines Cafe in Sleepy Hollow (visit here). they saw my cookies at the auction, and could i do the same cookie for their dinner party, and once again, i turned cookie dough into wine. ok, pictures of wine.
since their logo features red grapes, i stuck to the red/purple shades, and kept the "glass" gold. after getting a feel for it once, round 2, to me, looks quite improved. it was October, and i was getting a little 5-year-oldish about Halloween coming (death! candy! blood! glitter!), and i feared a repeat (and large) order would get monotonous, and i would get frustrated, and then i'd slop it all up. of course i was wrong. i reminisced about my October wedding, and made them all elegant and sparkly, and pouted when i ran out of cookies.
you know i actually used to fear that if i did what i loved, every day, i'd eventually hate it? i have a kind of ADD when it comes to arts and crafts--i crochet, paint, bead, sew, repurpose, wield a camera, (write long droning blog posts) and can make pottery on a wheel, but eventually i put it away and months go by. cookies i could do. every. day. i get that arrived-at-my-happy-place feeling, like a toddler with a blanky, or a stressed college kid with a cigarette.
but now that sounds like i'm addicted, a word which to me speaks to a more self-conscious and anxious frame of mind. and that happy-place is the opposite. i rarely make a cookie design that's an expression of Me. you're not meant to understand me, human, katie, artist, when i make a cookie that looks like a football helmet. it's either a request from someone else, or an attempt to convey something more archetypal to an audience, which by definition is also "someone else." there is a story to be told about [a change, a milestone, an event] and it needs at least one visual. one picture, for the first thousand words. when i'm decorating cookies, i'm part of the illustrative process. in a way, i created nothing especially new. foodwise, it's the same cookie. but in decorating it, i also convey, translate, reveal, represent... i enjoy how it is to be a conduit between "that concept" and "this cookie."
hubby Jeff loves the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but i love the 'making-of' bonus features. (remember, i used to strive for a special effects/make up career, and LOTR spared nuh-thing.) the crew devises a way to mold PVC into metal-looking rings (plastic is lighter) and 2 gents got to work essentially making the chain mail for every actor in every battle in all 3 movies. every day, linking little rings. every work day. for 4 years. !! then the camera was pointed at one and he said, "i wouldn't trade a minute of it for anything, it was the most amazing thing i've done in my life." i toast my wine cookie to that dude.
and also to 3 Vines, for enabling my happy little compulsion, and letting me translate their concepts. owner Flicka emailed that they were stunning. (i bow.) my pleasure.
coming up, i lend a hand to another fundraiser, i mix crazy colors for a bake sale, i make Vanessa some nude cookies (it's only sorta what you think), a lone shoe, lavender snow, poinsettias, choir bells, (award winning!) Bill-Cosby-sweateresque ornaments, Santa Frog, and more ornaments from an evening of (omg!) teaching!

wine and cookies.

when i bake for Brenda, i drop them off with her husband at the Elgin Y where he works. my last order caught the eye of Kay, their PR director, who asked me to provide some take-away cookie favors for guests at a wine auction fundraiser. at first they were to just be the glasses, which would have looked darling with some gilded filigrie stem design. but when i think of wine, i also think of toga'd Olympians with big piles of grapes. [tangent: i pick wild grapes and make jelly and grape juice. to DIE for, mmmm.]
so i used a simpler glass design, kept the gilded look by using pearl dust on all the surfaces, and baked a mini maple leaf and mini sideways Christmas tree against the stem for more stability and that little nod to Bacchus. the grapes were icing dots and pearl dragees. the "glass" was more like metal with bronze and silver pearl dust over brown and grey icing, respectively, but mom and dad have a totally 70s coaster set that's 'mercury glass,' with like, the profile of the god Mercury in the center. plus a set of tumblers from their (1969) wedding shower that i inherited that have old world maps on them, where North America is Terra Incognita, and they're all snazzed out with gold details. so i may have unconsciously nodded to Bacchus twice with these Me-Decade throw-back Mediterranean glassware effects. all that from being unable to make clear royal icing.
Kay used many exclamation points to tell me that they were awesome and very well received. i believe her; i got an order for an encore. thanks Kay!
...and coming soon, pumpkins, horseback riding, and a thank-you. and later, a bake sale, Thanksgiving/my birthday, and deer hunting. hmm...
and also this post will be seen by my 5000th visitor, unless 2 more people showed up while i typed this. thanks everyone for stopping by, i hope my silly little cookies made ya smile. :)

farmer's market!

this platter was SO much fun to make! the banana was the moon cookie cutter, the shape pinched at each end; the turnip was a heart and a palm tree spliced together; the lemon was a football shape; the radish was a mini heart and mini oak leaf; the cherries were made from a heart; the chili pepper from a leaf; the grapes from circles and a maple leaf; the orange was a plain circle; the watermelon was a half circle; the cauliflower and lettuce were a metal shape i didnt like and bent into an amorphus round shape; the peach was an apple with an altered bottom; the peas in a pod were circles and the moon again; and the rasberries were mini tombstones. i even gave the new shapes little leaves with a fondant cutter. i made them just for the fun of it, and i gave them to my mom when we visited for her birthday. now i'm all inspired to look at shapes beyond their original intended shape, or to combine shapes to make a new picture. i love looking at cookies as little pictures to color. (i was a coloring book artiste back in the day--i wore my crayons down to nubs.) when i think of the composition of the picture as a coloring book, with fields of color lying next to each other, designing cookies gets a whole lot easier. and a whole lot bigger. i would cut one shape and think of another. ...i think i like the blackberries the best.