I worked in a restaurant this summer and I was simultaneously repulsed and amazed by the process that food would go through on a daily basis. At first, the food is raw and clean, then it's massaged and sculpted and sliced into delicious shape. Customers of course leave scraps behind, which are carried back to the kitchen, and put with other scraps in a big bin. The congregation of scraps become this simultaneously familiar and alien substance, now unified in commitment to oil, grease and butter. Together it sloshes onto the floor, jumps to the ceiling. It creates a thin veneer over both the people working in the kitchen and the kitchen itself. It eventually moves to the garbage, where it slides out of its bin like a fat snake escaping capture, viscerally giving into gravity and meeting its kin.
The work pictured above is a bit of a failure. I wanted to see processes of decay and growth simultaneously, so I set up a tree, chicken breast and fermenting liquid in a dark basement encased by acrylic boxes. In two months things barely began to either grow or decay. I think in the end it became more of a reflection on my own desire to be in the same place long enough to see life change. My life is maybe to transient for that.
