‘Cold Comfort’

‘Cold Comfort’  looks at oral gratification’s objects of desire from cradle to grave. Food sustains and comforts us throughout our lives. Under stress, infant and adult alike may rely on their mouths to ease pain and frustration. Anyone who has handed a crying child a cookie knows this well. But at some point, the cookie doesn’t work anymore. Successive losses of innocence occur as we move through life. Oral experiences associated with those stages of life are poignant reminders of the past. Here, rendered in bronze, these comfort foods trigger associations of pleasure that are immediately frustrated by the medium. They are tantalizing but inaccessible, as is the past they evoke.

Food also identifies a particular time and place. The dead pheasants and loaves of bread in a Dutch still life are as specific to burgher culture as donuts and styrofoam cups are to ours. In ‘Cold Comfort’, these trompe l’oeil artifacts are part of a tradition reaching back to the Egyptian funerary sculpture which inspired much of this work.

Media: Bronze, Wood, Glass, Fabric     Dimensions: 48″ x 8″ x 8″     Date: 2010