As I set out to put together various items to act as my mise-en-place, I realized the task was a bit more involved than just foraging for materials.  It’s actually quite difficult to search for materials to create art piece with, without an idea for what that piece will be.  With food, gathering ingredients is the inspiration, it’s when ideas can build.  This can happen with materials as well and I think with further exploration, possibly in different materials outlets, I will be more inspired.

This project became more about showing the process of cooking one of my favorite meals through the tools I use but in a very static way.  I feel influenced by the Fluxus kits which are directed at very specific tasks or outcomes.  I wanted to display the tools as pop-outs, like how the pieces come in model airplane kits; each tool in the pop-out representing an element of the performance that I went through to create the meal, braised chicken with salsa verde.

Laser cutting the forms at about a 2/3 scale gave me an idea of what these pieces could look like. I envision them as wall pieces — possibly machined out of aluminum or wood and painted a single color. The piece differs from my original plan to explore mies-en-place but it still shows an extreme attention to lay-out of tools in a way that most people would never consider.

Feedback was helpful and made me realize that I needed to choose a setting for this project; in a gallery, in a kitchen, as a performance, on the wall, etc.  Physical attributes of the piece are also important, including the dimensionality of  the tools, showing time as well.  Arranging the tools in this way makes the meal seem sterile, is this my intention? Do I want to make it seem as though the outcome is always predefined and that the process is as well?  Does this accomplish showing the process of making this meal or are the implements too abstract?  The abstract view of them actually makes them into simple symbols, which I think is also compelling.

In a next iteration of this, I’d like to make a full-sized version, possibly using ready-made tools.