Recipe

2009
Audio and various sculptural elements

Description: For the audio component of Recipe, a Bill Cosby impersonator narrates the story of Jell-O over a backdrop of field recordings made in the town where the product was invented.  Above the chatter of visitors to The Jell-O Gallery and the noise of paintball battles spanning the product’s former factory, the impersonator describes the preparation of gelatin, the brand’s advertising rhetoric, science-fictional associations, and waning sociocultural impact.

Recipe (Bill)

2009
Plexiglas, glass, Jell-O,
condensed milk, water, butter
Dimensions Variable

Description: A cast of Bill Cosby’s head, made with Cherry Jell-O.  The basis for this cast was itself a cast, in Cherry Jell-O, that has been sitting in the refrigerator of a professor at the University of Puget Sound, in Washington state, since Bill came to speak in the late 1970s.  I contacted the professor, sent him mold-making materials and instructions, and was returned a mold made from this original cast.  Loosely resembling a death mask, this perishable Cosby head is paradoxically not allowed to decay, and must be made anew for each day of its exhibition.

Recipe
(Optic Chain)