Paper thin slices of fruits and vegetables are the material of choice for artist Margaret Dorfman. During the 10-day long process to create her bowls Dorfman cures, presses and dries more than 35 different seasonal vegetable and fruits used for the material she calls Vegetable Parchment.
Delicate. Whisper-thin. Gives new meaning to the term ‘fruit bowl’.
What delights me about creating these vegetable parchment bowls is the process of turning what is seen as ordinary and commonplace into something of beauty.
The bowls allow me to re-see what I take for granted; the luminous beauty of fruits and vegetables, their jewel-like colors, and most of all their ability to surprise and enchant.
Dorfman also fuses the parchment sheets to copper cuffs, creating the organic bracelets shown below.
Margaret’s work is lovely — and yummy looking!
There is also an artist from Korea (Jun Wong Jung), who has two dried veggie pieces featured in the book, “500 Necklaces.”
Dried carrot slices threaded on stainless steel wire, and dried cucumber slices threaded on stainless steel wire. Interesting! (I could not find a web site for this artist, but I’d bet that you could ::hint hint::)
Susan, thanks for an inspiring blog!
Twenty years or so ago, I began seeing bowls made of dried slices of fruits and vegtables and loved the look…..I thought ‘this can’t be so tough’, so I dove in slicing and layering. Well, my results weren’t so great
Dorfman’s are more beautiful and brilliant than anything I saw all those years ago. Just luscious..
Here’s a thought…make ‘fruit slice’ canes from PC, and layer them in the same fashion. If they contained a good amount of translucent and were sliced thin enough, you may get a very similar result.
Oh great. Another thing to try
Thanks Susan…
Jana, What is PC?
Pat – ‘pc’ is polymer clay!
oh yeah…just ran across this artist’s work and thought surely you had seen her before–and yes, my first thought was let’s so this in polymer clay!