Avant garde confectioneries
Amy Stevens' over-the-top creations are pure sugar magic
By Amy Strauss
Published: January 17th, 2008 | 11:38am
Amy Stevens loves to hate Martha Stewart. Crediting Stewart for her admirable, yet annoying perfection, the Philadelphia artist decided to, with her 30th birthday approaching, dive into Martha’s do-it-yourself domesticity and purchase herself an instructional video on cake decorating.
“I thought, 'I’m going to watch her video and it is going to be great',” says Stevens. Then, out of frustration and the realization of her limitations as a cake decorator, she found her new medium of art – cake batter. Solely sticking to yellow cake, she began to sculpt imperfect eye candy globed in mountains of icing that is sure to shock anyone into a sugar coma—and never to compare to Stewart’s flawless layered perfections.
However, the 60 or so cakes she’s designed were never meant for eating. Baked, sculpted and photographed, the sugary sweets are identified as her photography series Confections and are preordained to comment on her intense desire to strive for perfection and beauty, while still embracing the results of whatever her hands craft.
Beginning her career in the Southwest, Stevens attended Arizona State University immersing herself in women studies and photography. Following graduation, she hulled her gear to Seattle where she began selling layered-photographic collages of pinup girls and cats at First Friday sidewalk sales and art walks.
As her work progressed to incorporate iconographic cake imagery aside heavy usage of paint that resembled icing, it was only fitting that while attending Tyler School of Art for her masters in photo that this wannabe gourmand would begin producing food-themed portraits of any kind.
Taking cake portraiture to an art appreciative level, Stevens peruses her favorite fabric designer Web sites, including reprodepot.com, and hand selects vivid 50’s and 60’s-inspired fabrics to structure her cake designs after. “They are kind of ridiculous,” she says. “It is obvious my hand is present in their making and they are not perfect.”
With no dishwasher and no air-conditioning in her apartment, she’s serious about her latest work. Sometimes she’ll even make over 10 cakes at a time, recycling and freezing whatever pieces are left after each appetizing creation is crafted. “It’s a gratifying experience,” says Stevens. “It’s like I am giving a piece of myself for everyone to see.”
But, with over 60 cakes in the making, she’s afraid she’ll get too good. “One art blog wrote, ‘she’s getting better at the dots and dashes,’” says Stevens, which is why she sometimes over-emphasizes her tumbledown approach to her massive baked goods. And, she modestly reveals, she has yet to make a decent flower.
Yet, ironically so, Stevens friends label her a “domestic” and she prides herself being raised watching Dick Van Dyke. “Maybe the reruns of The Mary Tyler Moore Show have soaked into my head too much,” she says, while also revealing that she may be seen as a kitschy kitchen collector for her hoard of adorable cake stands, baking platters, outdated cookbooks, and food magazines—including a stack of, heaven forbid, Martha Stewart Living.
With Confections two years in the making, thanks to her fellowship from Philly’s Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Stevens' elaborate concoctions have been seen in group and solo shows in Portland, Seattle, Cleveland, Boston, Syracuse, Montreal, Philadelphia, and soon, Chicago. Of the above listed shows, many included real-life models that were meant to complement her fancily framed images and of course, tease visitors in need of vanilla-scented sugar rush.
“I know my cake’s are kind of like cake porn,” says Stevens. “They may not be for everybody, but for those with a food obsession — I’m going to do it until I’m sick of it and I’m not sick of it yet.”
Issue #24
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