Ode to Fat
Ode to fat is an ongoing multidisciplinary project that includes a book, prints, drawings, paintings, photographs and a planned installation. The text below accompanies the book, not yet pictured on this website.
Photo positive litho plates exposed with raw bacon, printed on Tyvek and adhered to sheet of packing insulation 2021
The Ode to Fat was born in November of 2021. But really it was born with my body 21 years before. I am a living Ode to Fat.
The book is a celebration, and a rebuttal to the demonization of fat of all kinds. Fat people, fatty foods, bigness and expansiveness, space taking. Just like bacon, I am a demon who is delicious and vile. Too much of a good thing-that's really a bad thing-that's really a good thing. This book is about convincing myself that indulgence is not earned by deprivation. That joy is not sinful but wholly necessary.
The book asks: Do you remember what it's like to bite into a piece of bacon? To tear it with your teeth and chew the fat and muscle till it's a salty paste? Do you remember the feeling of grease on your fingers? Do you remember wiping them on your dirty pants? Do you remember what it felt like to eat before you knew that some food was holy and some was sin? Do you remember when your whole body fit under the water in the bathtub? And you prayed to be bigger? This book gets your fingers greasy whether you like it or not. It instructs the reader to recall joyous, playful, childlike eating. It plays with its food.
The book is a new telling of an old story. It narrates the fairytale-dance between pious puritanical goodness and quenching, shameful gluttony. The one with the pig and the lady.
The book is a documentation of an obsession. The book was born out of a hunger for joyous consumption. It is a publicization of internal struggle, of deepest desire. It is a search for satisfaction.
The book is made of bacon grease and egg and paper and ink and thread.
