In selecting works for Ingest, I revisited the question Suzi Gablik raised in Conversations Before the End of Time, “Was it possible to have an embodied stance, then, and not be exclusionary?” Can Ingest exist as a dialogue, honoring the food choices of everyone? It is my hope that this exhibition will increase each viewer’s appreciation of the personal benefits received from food, the energy from the sun that packs each mouthful, and the rain that falls on every morsel. Awareness of these benefits is motivation to interact with the environment with the care of a steward.

Find the Vegetarians
The artists selected for this exhibition explore numerous facets of our complex relationship with food. Many of the artists reveal an interest in vegetarian themes, and with good reason. Research supports the long-standing theory that vegetarianism is better for our bodies and the planet. According to the Mayo Clinic newsletter, plant-based diets “are associated with lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, less heart disease, lower risk of some cancers and decreased weight” (www.mayoclinic.org). Observing a vegetarian diet and supporting locally produced food is quickly becoming recognized as a means of reducing the emission of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. A headline from a November 2006 United Nations Report read "Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars" (U.N. News Centre online: www.un.org/News/). The rise in popularity of venues like Earth Fare and Whole Foods Market, and the introduction of Veggie Burgers to fast food restaurants is evidence of the increasing interest in meat alternatives, healthy eating, and environmentally friendly food production practices.

Both Krysia Haag and Irene Chan address the connection between vegetarianism's eco-friendliness and the recent drought. Krysia Haag's Virtual Water visually represents the amount of water it takes to support a plant-based diet, versus a meat-based diet. The numbers are represented with sparkling mosaic raindrops descending the wall. Haag states, “The purpose of the piece is not to insist that the resource-conscious viewer convert to an entirely plant-based diet, but to encourage reducing consumption of resource-intensive foods higher on the food chain.” (A local mosaics artist and a University of Georgia graduate, Haag recently attended a mosaics seminar in Istanbul.)


Similarly, Irene Chan's image, Water, contrasts the 6.25 gallons of water required to produce ¼ pound of wheat to the 625 gallons of water required to produce ¼ pound of meat. Malnourished, created with incense, represents the earth’s population, signifying the half of the world’s population that is malnourished with singed-versus-burned holes. The artist has created 6300 dots and holes. When multiplied by 1,000,000, this number equals the artist’s researched estimate for the earth’s population. (Chan is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Her work is included in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, the Tate Modern, British Library, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, among others.)

Jaime Raybin’s Can You Find the Vegetarians? book contains photographic portraits accompanied by text revealing the subjects’ diets from the artists’ interviews questioning their food choices, as well as how others perceive them due to those choices. The resulting dialogue is honest and pertinent. (Raybin is an emerging artist with a B.F.A. from Watkins College of Art and Design.)

Judith Berk King’s elaborate image-making process echoes the content of her work. As she writes: "The food we eat is far removed physically and emotionally from its source." To arrive at her final product, King creates ceramic sculptures suggesting the "interiors of muscles, organs, and viscera." She then makes dioramas with these sculptures, using Plexiglas to imply packaging and display cases. The final works are gesso, paint and pastel on paper. King offers the viewer entrancing images in scrumptious colors, dark red accented with bright yellow highlights, dramatic black backgrounds full of mystery. But upon reading the titles, such as Bovine #2298774 Slaughtered May 19th, 2006; Presented for Consumption June 5, 2006, the viewer realizes that these pleasing images are of slaughtered animals, abstracted beyond recognition, just as meat is in the grocery store. Her titles are fictional, derived from the numbered tags often placed on cattle for identification purposes. King, who teaches at Miami International University of Art and Design, is concerned with the time lapse between the slaughter of the animal and its arrival in the store, and how the animal, its carcass, and the resulting meat are handled along the way.

Through their work, both Jaime Bull and Jocelyn Coulter address the treatment of animals intended for slaughter. Bull’s Chicken Truck shows caged poultry being transported, a common sight in Athens, Georgia. Bull, who earned a B.F.A. from the University of Georgia, denies the morbidity of her subject matter with gold spray paint and bright red circles indicating the truck’s rear lights. In Coulter’s Fois Gras, a ceramic sculpture of a duck is crammed into a small metal cage, highlighting this infamously cruel treatment of animals for the production of a gourmet product. The duck’s head and neck, as if seeking escape from the miniscule enclosure, extend beyond the boundary of the cage.

Food Technology, Modification & Duplication
Daniel Kariko, a professor of photography at Florida State University in Tallahassee, deals with modern migration and disappearing farmlands in his Cartography series, two of which are included in Ingest. Co-Habitation squeezes a thin image of a city skyline between two larger images of cattle forced into close proximity. By contrasting a high-rise apartment building with cows living on top of each other, Kariko encourages us to consider the differences and similarities in spatial concerns, drawing upon anthropomorphic inferences on desirable spaces for cattle, and our assumptions about animal preferences. Health concerns and other such biological considerations emerge as well. Kariko’s juxtaposition of a farm with a developed urban area actively examines the current land situation in Florida, where he notes that about "150,000 acres of farmland every year" are lost to "various commercial developers." Of his photo collage We Have the Technology, he states he "examines the very nature of what we eat by juxtaposing the old broken-down Yugo with the controversial practice of beef cattle processing—which includes growth hormone injections, and castration." In an image on the left, a group of men gather around a car displaying the masculine prowess associated with car repair, and the vulnerability of the loss of transportation. Similarly, in the image on the far right, a man stands over a restrained cow, castrating the bull, denying its masculinity, stripping it of its power. The middle image shows what appears to be the same bull, just moments before castration, in the same restraining system, receiving growth hormone injections. The controversy of the hormones used in the meat and dairy industry, and their effect on our health, add tension to the work.

Also addressing livestock is Cloning 101, a ceramic sculpture by local artist and University of Georgia graduate Cheri Wranosky, fusing a cow and a pig. Her illustration of the possible effects of cloning has the fantastical whimsy of a children’s book character, an animal with no rear end, just the head of a cow and the head of a pig, peacefully joined at the abdomen. The creature's happy disposition belies anything unnatural about the strange marriage.

Suzanne Proulx, a graduate of Syracuse University’s M.F.A. program and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s B.F.A. program, also comments on the bizarre possibilities introduced by genetic modification in her similarly strange combinations of animals and plants. In Hatchlings (see image above), baby chickens hatching from oranges look at once real and bizarrely impossible. Created with hydrostone, the chickens look wet, their feathers only partially grown and eyes not yet able to open, as though they have just burst from the orange egg where they have grown, in a yolk that is both fruit and animal. Skinny legs break out and beaks emerge from the orange peel that lies scattered about the hatching area. In Potato Eyes, potatoes with human eyes, long lashes, and the occasional teeth or tuft of hair both disgusts and attracts. Realistic qualities, such as slightly bloodshot eyes and the dirty appearance of the potatoes, reinforce our reaction. The pun on words in Re-Seeding, a collection of cantaloupes with human ears, is reinforced by the few bits of hair that remain where a hairline might have been. And in Lemons, lemons with realistic human nipples provide a twist to the notion of sucking on a lemon. (Proulx is the education director of the Greater Erie Youth Symphony Orchestra, and is the former assistant curator of the Erie Art Museum, both in Erie, Pennsylvania.)

Both Wranosky and Proulx's works provoke consideration of pressing questions—when we completely control the food we produce, what will we create? Where will it stop? Squeezing lemon juice from a nipple, or tasting orange chicken without the need for adding an ingredient to the stew? These artists challenge the viewer to question the ultimate goals of cloning and genetic modification.

Bobbie Moore’s Everyman His Own Meatball is a group of four plates, topped with a meatball among other items. Moore invents an imaginary scene at the molecular level of the single nucleotide polymorphisms, or Snips, used to "comment on the genetic alternation of organisms which are present in our food now without being labeled in the U.S." The artist calls them "Casper the Unfriendly Ghosts" in our food. The title of her piece derives from the 1919 Dada publication "Jedermann sein eigner Fussball," or "Everyman His Own Football," which included photomontages by John Heartfield, who daringly parodied contemporary Nazi propaganda. By referencing the currently influential, yet historically controversial Dada artist and his critique of Nazi Germany, Moore expresses her tremendous concern with the potentially tyrannical methods of current food industry practices. (With an M.F.A from Pratt Institute, and a B.F.A. in from the University of Texas, Austin, Moore has been a visiting artist and taught at numerous schools around the country including the University of Washington, Savannah College of Art and Design, and the University of Central Connecticut.)

Disease & Decay
Anna Velkoff Freeman humorously and playfully explores the possibility of hazardous bacteria in food with decorative, design-oriented sgraffito process ceramic tiles. She enlarges "images of microscopic food-borne bacteria" and combines them with "images of burgers, biohazard symbols and cleaning products" on the surfaces of ceramic tiles. The E. coli microbe, as Freeman portrays it, has long sinuous limbs that stretch out like those of a sea creature floating in the ocean. Using patterns as a device she repeats biohazard symbols in bright orange and a small hamburger symbol, with a patty between two buns, which emphasizes the role of unclean mass production in disease risks. Cleaning supplies are referenced as well, with an image of a spray bottle. We have seen numerous examples of E. coli contamination in meats, specifically hamburger meat, and an outbreak of E. coli in spinach in September of 2006, which caused a total disappearance of the product. The threat of E. coli in food as a result of poor hygiene or improper food handling highlights "our general disconnectedness with what we eat." (Freeman earned her B.F.A. from Alfred University’s School of Art & Design and earned her M.F.A from Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University’s joint program in Visual Studies. She currently teaches ceramics and sculpture courses at Old Dominion University and Virginia Wesleyan College.)

Nicolette Westfall could be considered a culinary archeologist. She photographs discarded foods and writes comments over the documentary imagery. For example, an image of peas bears the words, "Frozen good—eat before melt," and an onion image has written on it "Good—avoid." Texts seem unrelated to the object and even occasionally contradicts what the viewer might expect to see written. The artist seems to imply that some foods, though good, or good for the consumer, should be avoided. And other foods, that perhaps may cause harm to anyone who consumes it, should be indulged in immediately. This confusion reiterates the message given by the commercial food industry, where inexpensive and visually appealing foods are rarely what our bodies are actually in need of, and often create more problems than good. Westfall first became interested in photographing food while working as a wedding photographer’s assistant, surrounded by "half-eaten plates and smeared wine glasses." The photographs included in Ingest are part of her on-going investigations. (Her work has been included in numerous publications, including BUST Magazine.)

Governmental Assistance?
Megan Cronin's site-specific installation, Soft Crack Creeper, made of vines coated with homemade marshmallow, highlights the overuse of corn syrup in our diet. Utilizing the forms of creeping kudzu, Cronin cleverly compares the introduction of high fructose corn syrup in the American diet to the government program that brought kudzu to the southeastern United States. Cronin explains that the governmental actions to aid farmers’ corn surplus lead to the development of high fructose corn syrup during the 1970's and 80's. The inexpensiveness of high fructose corn syrup led food manufacturers to use it in a variety of products, even in foods where we would not expect it, such as bread. Debates and research continue to investigate the role of high fructose corn syrup in rising obesity rates. As Cronin observes, "So, like kudzu, a governmental program aimed at aiding a small population has a negative impact on an even greater one...and again it's hard to see/know what's going on until the damage has been done." Cronin has created marshmallow installations at Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine, where Cronin earned her M.F.A. in Studio Art and Critical Theory, and at Clarke Gallery in Lincoln, Massachusetts. This piece is reconceived to take advantage of the wood beams in ATHICA, as well as to resemble local kudzu.

David Burns’ Patriotic is a 2005 video of two men eating at the Hollywood Bowl restaurant. One is not interested in his food, and is eventually fed food that has been chewed by the other man. As Burns suggests, "the intimacy between the two men is hard to categorize - lovers, friends or family?" By the end of the 11-minute video, an orchestra in the background is playing the Star-Spangled Banner. The metaphoric aspects of the piece are endless, with subtle reference to the force-feeding of ideas to the American public by the government. (Burns currently teaches at University of California, Irvine and lives and works in Los Angeles. He earned a B.F.A. from CalArts and an M.F.A. from UC Irvine. His video work has been shown in galleries around the world, including The Armenian Museum of Experimental Art; Seoul Museum of Art, Korea; Florean Museum of Art, Romania; and in festivals including InsideOUT, ADD-TV, Pressplay, Mix Festival, and the Chicago Underground Film Festival.)

Local artist, and repeat ATHICA exhibitor John English has adapted a pop-up toaster to produce toast with a burnt-in image, "W." Using cheap white bread provided in stacks, gallery visitors make their own toast marked with the symbols, and take it with them in a baggie. English’s Foretoaster addresses the impact that the government and economic programs have on readily available foods for the poor, in our children’s school lunches, and in phenomena such as what Cronin calls "the infestation of corn syrup," which results from excesses created by subsidies through the Farm Bill. Westfall might perhaps mark white bread with "Bad- eat anyway." A food to avoid, it maintains an established position in our grocery stores, due to its inexpensive cost. (As well as an artist, English is a professor emeritus of the University Of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications who has been an active presence regionally as a writer, filmmaker, editor, community activist and more since 1970.)

Abstract Nutrition
Savannah artist Blazo Kovacevic also provides cleverly conceived take-away edible art with Continental Break(fast) Nutrition Facts (see image left), in which he has printed nutritional fact information on confectioner’s sheets used for creating decorative icing for cakes. As Kovacevic observes, the nutritional fact label is often used to select food, replacing the intuitive "smell, taste, or look of the food." Kavocevic has offered the label as the final product for consumption. (The piece was installed in September 2004 at Gallery Chaos, in Belgrade, Serbia, and Gallery Karver, in Podgorica, Montenegro in September 2006. Kovacevic earned his M.F.A. from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and a B.F.A. from the University of Fine Arts, Cetinje, Montenegro.)

If Kovacevic suggests a lack of interest in food for its sensual qualities, Natalie Gazaway and James Kubie push the purpose of food as a source of nutrition to the limit with M.A.N.T.I.S., a nutritional suppository. The artists suggest that a busy lifestyle makes eating a nuisance. Gazaway and Kubie satirize the American lifestyle, creating commodities for commercial distribution. The following is from M.AN.T.I.S’s advertising: "Have you ever said to yourself, ‘I am so hungry but I have absolutely no time to eat’? If the answer is yes, then M.A.N.T.I.S. is the product for you. M.A.N.T.I.S. is a nutritional suppository designed for individuals who are always on the go. Why waste time eating orally when you can conserve time by eating anally! M.A.N.T.I.S. gives you the benefits of a full meal without the hassle of cooking, cleaning, or even that mundane task of chewing. The fabricators of M.A.N.T.I.S. understand that you are a busy, hard- working individual pressed for time. Therefore, we have created full meals in suppository form that will nourish the body in the same way orally eaten foods do." Essentially, Gazaway and Kubie are producing the opposite of a slow-foods movement. (Gazaway, a University Of Georgia graduate, currently serves on the ATHICA Board. Kubie studied Digital Media at the University of Georgia, and produced a performance event for ATHICA in Fall 2006. He is currently working towards a MFA in Performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.)

Classified & Recorded
While Gazaway and Kubie sardonically address fast-paced consumption, other artists in the exhibit celebrate the time, effort, and money that eating requires. Arthur Huang, Rachel Jobe, and Christopher Jennings have each invented visually compelling ways to present detailed records of all the food they have personally consumed over specific periods of time.

Arthur Huang’s 2002 Diet as Periodic Table documents all the foods he ate during 2002. Huang’s work evokes thoughts of the artist as a scientist, researching patterns, situations, and presenting the discoveries and data in a visually comprehensible form. He has divided the foods into ten categories, and "represents the number of days in each month (January (top) through December (bottom) that each food element was consumed." In its specificity and quirkiness, the resulting chart is quite humorous, sprinkled with odd items such as pickled spinach and chocolate muscat gummy. (Huang earned an M.F.A from Rhode Island School of Design. He earned his B.A. in Biochemistry/Molecular Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley.)

Rachel Jobe has been saving her receipts since 2005, and subsequently dividing them into categories, in an on-going project she calls Receipts and Data. For the ATHICA installation, her receipts dealing with food have been tallied, represented in graph-like drawings, and physically placed on spikes, as restaurant would a completed order. Jobe has made the money we spend on food palpable with a pile of gold-covered chocolate coins that she invites viewers to take and eat, referencing Felix Gonzalez-Torres' well-known 1991 edible candy piece, "Untitled" (Portrait of Ross in L.A.). (Jobe earned her B.F.A. from the University of Georgia in 2004. She currently resides in NYC where she is an M.F.A. candidate at City University of New York.)

Christopher Jennings, who has also shown at ATHICA previously, photographed everything he ate in 2003, incorporating the images into an obsessively thorough interactive new media piece, Eat 2003 (see detail above). He arranged his consumption in a clickable calendrical grid that includes the time and place of ingestion. (See www.eat2003.com) Interestingly, he observed that the effect of the gaze on his diet was not what he expected. While he originally assumed accountability would improve his diet, the opposite came true. These three artists’ fanatical thoroughness captivates us.

Origins
Stephen Humphreys, a local lawyer known for his many photographic travel essays, contributes a documentary work focusing on local food-production titled Transformations of Flesh. His motive is to draw attention to the work of Full Moon Cooperative, the local organic farmers who supply the Farm 255 restaurant with produce and meat. Humphreys writes, “The documentation follows the process from the dirty work of sowing, care and cultivation, through the harvesting and marketing in a trendy upscale setting.”

Summer Zickefoose’s "Posey County Breakfast" 5-minute video shows the artist eating a bowl of cereal in an Indiana cornfield, surprisingly introducing consumption to the site of food production. "The Setting," a performance and video, combines a field and a conventional dining room setting to create a surreal eating experience. The artist writes messages in the dirt with sugar—a loaded symbol for food conscious consumers that is gradually vanishing from the diets of informed consumers—poured from fabricated cloth "legs" she wears around her shoulders. Dressed in an old-fashioned apron, the artist plays on the role of the homemaker and mother, feeding her hungry family on plates decorated with text from various diaries. One plate reads “It seemed I could hardly eat supper tonight-alone; alone; the bright stars of my life are not here…”. (Zickefoose earned an M.F.A. from the University of Florida, Gainesville, and both a B.F.A. and a B.A. in Art History from the University of Iowa.)

The mission of Serve and Project, the artist-team of Lisa Link and Io Palmer is "to be a platform for people to dialogue about social and political issues through the making, production and consumption of food." They gather recipes online via their "Call for Recipes" site. (serveandproject.com/recipes/recipe.html) For Ingest, they mapped out the origins of the ingredients of four recipes. Utilizing a strong graphic design approach, the team buried maps beneath layers of text describing emotional attachments to recipes. For instance, "Deviled Eggs" submitted by Julie Falsetti of York, Pennsylvania, reads, "I don't ever remember being taught how to make deviled eggs. My mother made them; my grandmother made them. They were just something always on the table."(Link earned an M.F.A. from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an undergraduate degree from Harvard-Radcliffe College. She has participated in several Public Art projects, and has lectured at universities around the country. Palmer earned an M.F.A. from University of Arizona, Tucson and a B.F.A. from Tyler School of Art. She currently teaches at Washington State University. Both Link and Palmer have shown at ATHICA independently in 2006 and 2005 respectively.)

Comfort & Nostalgia
Melissa Harshman, Printmaking Chair at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, peruses thrift stores and flea markets for imagery that references 1950’s era culinary tastes. 2nd Place combines several images in layered transparencies. Underneath the entire image area is a vintage yearbook page from a woman’s college. A line drawing of young women doing household chores, like mopping and sweeping, provides the second transparent layer. Over those combined images is a woman in a 1950’s cocktail dress and a jello mold. A 2nd place ribbon tops off the composition. Ring around the Tuna has a similarly layered composition, but the focus this time is on a green jello mold filled with tuna! Harshman demonstrates changes in culinary preferences over time; what once was vogue can become absurd. Upon its introduction, white bread, for example, was considered far superior to the common brown, whole-grain bread. But research has proven the nutritional faults of what was relatively recently received as revolutionary. Harshman’s nostalgic imagery is also inspired by person



Food is a constant necessity, essential to our survival. Yet it means so much more to society than simple sustenance. Rarely is there a gathering without food; each holiday has a traditional accompanying cuisine. We express ourselves through food. We connect with others through food. And through food, we engage with the environment around us in a very intimate way. The old adage, “you are what you eat,” is a true one indeed. By ingesting food "from the earth, ripened by the sun" (to quote my daughter’s Montessori school observance) we are inviting
the outside world to literally become part of us.

Along with breath, food is placed at the foundation of the Hierarchy of Needs, developed by the psychologist Maslow in the 1940’s. It is evidence of our conscientiousness that this essential foundation finds expression in that final crown in Maslow’s hierarchy, the creative outlet.al fond food memories; Aunt Billie’s Jello, was inspired by an old cookbook with handwritten recipes as well as "the ribbon salad jello my Aunt Billie made at every family occasion during my childhood." (Harshman earned an M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin, and her B.F.A. from Cornell University.)

Using similar source material in his collage Plenty, Billy Renkl elaborates on Norman Rockwell’s well-known illustration Thanksgiving Day. Renkl, who showed at ATHICA in 2005, has amassed an enormous banquet with more food than could possibly be consumed by a single family, on a table underneath the gracious arms of a caring mother figure. While Rockwell’s feast is sparse in comparison, with only a juicy turkey, a plate of asparagus and a bowl of fruit on a table set for twelve, Renkl’s scene has only one consumer, and the food continues for as far as the eye can see. And oh, what food it is! Hams and eggs and Jell-O in those strange molds Harshman depicts so elegantly, cakes with whipped toppings in funny designs, milkshakes, and jars of pickled goods. The brilliantly colored setting menacingly suggests an accumulation of perishable gluttony, a vice often attributed to American culture. Renkl’s reference to Rockwell, an American icon, and his American holiday portrayal lead us to a critique of over-consumption in the United States. (Renkl teaches at Austin Peay State University, in Clarksville, TN. He earned an M.F.A. from the University of South Carolina, Columbia and a B.F.A. from Auburn University.)

Margaret DeLima’s work is partly temporal in nature, created with food that will decompose over time, as well as paper. DeLima celebrates the sensual comforts of food, and the power of memories surrounded by food. Self Portrait in Hospital with M&M Cookie Circa 1976 is a puppet holding a plate with an M&M cookie. The sad face of the artist as a child begs for deliverance through food, as though the only joy in her bleak hospital stay is to be found in the colorful cookie on her plate. (DeLima earned an M.F.A. from Goddard College, and an MS in Education from Dowling College. She currently teaches at the Katharine Gibbs School in Melville, NY.)

Surreal Rituals
Fiona Kinsella creates inedible cakes topped with relics, bones, dolls, and other such oddities. A list of materials reads "Royal icing, moose jaw, icon, rhinestones, animal tooth, faun, hair of an animal, wood, glass, and fondant icing." Another includes a guitar string, ash, and flowers. Kinsella has embodied the ritual of food in her cakes, which reference "rights of passage from one station of life to another: from birth, baptism, and childhood, into adulthood or marriage, and inevitably, death (cake and cold cuts in the church basement)." Kinsella has titled this body of work the Wilderness, explaining "the Wilderness has more to do with ‘revelation’ and/or confronting the devil in the dessert, than spotting a deer in the woods." Her eccentric cakes lure the viewer with appetizing appearances, only to repel them with unappetizing ingredients. (Kinsella received her B.A. from the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, Canada and a Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Graphics from Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, Canada.)

Irina Arnaut’s A Taste of Honey (10.53 min) is an overtly sexual video that plays with the sensuality of food. Two men, one wearing a long blonde wig and a white wedding dress, are in a non-descript room with 1980’s style colored squares painted on the walls. The interaction begins as though a sexual encounter will ensue, but the tense relationship quickly turns to humor with the introduction of a Hostess Twinkie. The couple devours a table-full of Ding-Dongs and Twinkies, instead of each other. But when only one sweet remains on the table, a struggle separates the two, and one flees into the wilderness through the window, victoriously eating "her" last hidden treat. (Arnaut earned a BS in Studio Art from New York University.)

Claudia Drake re-configures antique etchings and engravings, creating impossible realities reminiscent of the work of Max Ernst. The artist appropriately calls her series Urgent Alchemy, as the combination of various common figures and objects results in a 'golden' image. For instance, in Waltzing Matilda, a gentleman holds the hand of a woman whose shoulder is replaced with a meat hook attached to the body of a cow sectioned into meat cuts. Has the woman been considered for consumption? Is her companion considering the best cut available for selection? Cannibalism, anyone? (Drake’s work is in the permanent collections of the Artcolle Museum in France, Point Jaune Museum in Switzerland, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Florida, and The International Museum of Assemblage and College in Mexico.)

Transformations
Mike Calway-Fagen’s digital print, Homogenization is of a ball made out of single-serving half-and-half containers. The title is a play on the unification of multiples into one object and the practice of processing milk, and subtly refers to the homogenization of society. Highly evocative of atomic structures, the piece also highlights the chemist's role in contemporary food production. (Calway-Fagen earned a B.F.A. from the University of Tennessee. While living in Nashville, he co-directed SooPlex, an alternative art venue. He currently serves on ATHICA’s Board.)

Severn Eaton’s contributions to Ingest include Mother’s Cheese, cheese made from his wife’s breast milk. Mother’s Cheese causes a moment of pause, as we consider the difference in consuming milk made from human body fluids as opposed to milk from a cow's. Tradition and convention have made a cow the acceptable source, even though a human breast is the natural source. His provocative conceptual piece gently reveals the hypocrisy of dairy consumption. Our Daily Bread, made from Sertraline, the active chemical in the anti-depressant drug Zoloft, intertwines the food and drug industries while highlighting the role of food as a provider of comfort. These “comfort foods” are brought to another level with the addition of Zoloft to the list of ingredients. The title Our Daily Bread suggests both daily medications and the heavy dependence on bread in this country’s population. Eaton is also represented by his digital prints of his realistic looking faux “biotech foods” such as New Mushroom!, which he fabricates out of cast resin and electronic parts such as microchips, and then photographs among “normal” produce in grocery store displays. (Eaton is employed by Cornell University. He earned his M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a B.F.A. from Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.)

Conclusion
We are grateful to these artists for creating visual contemplations of the role of food in our lives. In viewing their works, we reconsider how food affects our bodies, our planet, and our emotional well being.
Curators’ Biographies
Curator Beth Sale received her MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a BFA from the University of Georgia at Athens. She has taught at the University of Miami, and Miami-Dade College. Her artwork has been exhibited across the Southeast, and internationally.

She began writing ArtNotes, an art column for Flagpole Magazine, Athens’ independent entertainment weekly, in 2004. Currently, she is painting, curating local exhibits, and teaching at the Oconee campus of Gainesville State College. She is a mother of two and a vegetarian.


Assistant Curator Jacob Cawthon is a local sculptor working towards his graduate degree in Art Education at the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art. He earned his BFA in Sculpture from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. PA.

He has exhibited internationally. This is his debut curatorial project.

Director’s Note
If you have just finished Beth Sale’s essay—in which she deftly leads us through the complex topics the 33 artists' of Ingest engage during their collective exploration of our gustatory nature—you can imagine our appreciation of her taking on this project. Ingest is pehaps the largest show to hit ATHICA since the Product show of 2003. She and assistant curator Jacob Cawthon culled works from over 75 excellent submissions, and regretted that they could not accept more. I especially like how many of their picks employ humor and wit to address the serious and often politicized issues along the road food travels to get from field to mouth. Sale’s focus, passion, energy and enthusiasm are wondrous!

When Sale first proposed the idea of an exhibit focusing on food to ATHICA's Annual Exhibition Selection Committee, we were immediately excited, as the topic is so firmly and fascinatingly rooted at the intersection of the domestic and the public spheres, effortlessly exemplifying the 70's slogan "the personal is political." The relentlessness of our bodies' everyday demands also demands that thinking individuals be concerned with how our society produces and distributes food—and the artists included in this show are nothing if not thoughtful. Two of the installation artists, Megan Cronin of Boston and Rachel Jobe of New York City are even traveling here to personally install their works—clearly an expression of their personal passions for the issues involved in food and self. Summer Zickefoose of Evansville, Indiana will also be visiting to present a closing performance that utilizes the tantalizing installation that awaits her in the front office space! Gratitude too is due assistant curator Jacob Cawthon for his involvement, and installation skills.

Please be sure to attend some of this exhibit's affiliated events, listed to the right, as they will provide further opportunities for gallery goers to contemplate these complex and vital issues.

If you love what we do, and are motivated to help us continue, there are several ways to manifest that love, one of which is quite painless! If you open an account, a new equity line or get a Visa card at SunTrust bank between now and May 15th, they will donate $100 to ATHICA! (This the third time they have extended the deadline!) Please surf to: promotion. suntrust. com/mycause/. Our Key Supporters Campaign seeks individuals & businesses able and willing to help keep our doors open by covering one month’s worth of basic expenses—in return your name, or the name of a loved one, child’s birthday, business logo will be on display all year round on our Key Supporters banner. Please email info@athica.org or call 208-1613 for more info.

Our spring show, Adventures in Mysticism, curated by Rebecca Brantley & Mike Calway-Fagen, opens April 12, 2008 and features photo essays by Nate Larson from Chicago, IL and & kinetic sculptures by Malena Bergmann from Charlotte, NC.