Comestible Ron Padgett

We’re at Biblio Bash to have fun together. To shake it, to get down, to laugh it up, to savor and kick back and swing. Why make art here when it’s already so entertaining?

Parties are important. A good party is a relational utopia, ideally both comfortable and exciting, where we convene with the express purpose of sharing delight. At parties we play with our identities, performing personas we aspire to, and experimenting with new ways of revealing our selves to each other. Parties essentially function as joyous spaces set apart from our daily lives where we feel safe interrogating the social constructions that frame them. Like the layers of our subconscious minds do in dreams, we often work things out in the interstitial social spaces of parties. It’s this playfully interrogative nature of parties that make them ideal places for art interventions.

For this party, Biblio Bash 2013, I wanted to create contrasting sensory experiences through which party-goers could experience the beautiful literary work that Coffee House Press brings to life. I responded to two poems by Ron Padgett that particularly resonate with the way I relate to creative production. I set my responses inside contrasting yet typical party experiences. The first is the shared joy of spectacle, where the myriad actions of the group shape and ultimately demolish a large edible installation, and the second is the personal revelation amidst the crowd, where tiny dessert installations, editioned as multiples, are available for private individual experience within the larger context of the party.