Basic Ingredients

by Leslie Brier, Brier Design Studio

The Art About Food Show just opened at LibertyTown last Friday night. I'd been collecting items to use in a food-themed assemblage for awhile and I finally got them all together about a week ago. It started with a cocoa tin and a small antique doll. (I think she's about 4 inches tall.)

And this page from a promotional cookbook:

Normally, I would make a color copy of it, but I started this project late at night, so I decided I'd go ahead and use the original.

This was my rough layout. I painted the rolling pin to match the ad, and then placed items where I thought they should go. I took this photo so I could put everything back after I added color and texture to the background. (Sorry the quality of the photos wasn't better. I wasn't thinking about showing them to anyone else when I took them.)

I had some old paper ribbon that I was used by 3 Chefs Restaurant to wrap around cardboard boxes of fried chicken. I used it to define the different areas of my artwork. You can see that I added color, too. Nothing was secured to the board at this point, so I took that photo to refer back to later.

This is the finished piece. It's rare for me to stay this true to my original concept. Usually, what I start out with and what I end up with are miles apart. In this case, I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do, and not a lot of time to complete it, so I had to trust my instincts, and get it done. In the end I was pleased with the result.