Sarah K Williams & Stephanie Sugawara

Artist Statement:

Sarah: I aim for a reality where the boundary between sculpture, found object, pantry item, and couture dinner is blurred into a singular experience. Should we bite the building? Should we drink the sweater? The beautiful difference between working in food versus working in sculpture comes down to intimacy and brevity. The trust in a swallow, the fragility of temperature, the risk of melt. I want to take the best parts of food and the best parts of fine art and marry them for a brief moment before devourment. It won't be the same tomorrow, and that's by design. Sometimes we need to nibble on something that matches our insides, inspires curiosity about the natural world, or oozes our favorite shade of your favorite yellow, making our wrists soften and our hair a little static.

Stephanie: I am fascinated by opulence and decadence equally countered by comfort and simplicity (although I lean more to the latter). I love to recreate a memory with food, cook up a feeling through taste, and imagine a new experience. I love towering plateaus of fruitti di mare, grand aioli’s, bread sculptures, cornucopias, sunny picnics, an Alice in Wonderland tea party, sweets as bedazzled jewels, french calissons inspired to make a queen smile, dishes as regional celebrations, like paella, little bowls of banchan (little Korean side dishes), spices and foods from faraway. I am curious about food history, recipes from long ago, ways of cooking that are almost no more.

Sarah K Williams _ Cracker Spread _ 2021 _ 24' x 30" Based In, Chinatown, NYC

Bio

Sarah K Williams (b.1987) is a multi-disciplinary artist working between food, sculpture, and performance. Recent fellowships and residencies include NARS, Wave Hill, Target Margin Theater Institute, Studios at MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. Raised in Virginia and based in Brooklyn, she received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied experimental music at the Universität der Künste in Berlin on a Fulbright Fellowship. She is also the founder/director of Sprechgesang Institute, a research-based multi-disciplinary artist collective. In 2020 she developed a sculptural snack service called Aesthetically Complex Pies.

https://www.aestheticallycomplexpies.com/