“Eye Eat Too” and “Blue Plate Special”

The Kemper Gallery at the Illinois Institute of Technology hosted an installation by GAA member Deborah Adams Doering titled “Eye Eat Too.” Installation materials included living blueberry bushes, grow lights, paintings on yupo-mylar, and stenciling on glass.

An essay written by IIT Humanities Professor John Snapper hightlights some of the concerns of the art installation:

In the 1950's, the art theorist Harold Rosenberg famously said that the apples that appeared in old still-lifes "had to be brushed off the table … so that nothing would get in the way of the act of painting." Eye Eat Too refutes that dichotomy between food and painting. Deborah Doering brings the food into the art so that we can visually eat well, while still preserving dynamic artistic action in her fluid core forms.

Eye Eat Too unites two established themes in Doering's artistic work: her symbolic system of form based on a rotated disk, and the culture of food and nourishment...."

(The complete essay may be read at http://www.deborahdoering.com/writings/eyeeattoo.html.)

The Mobile Food Collective, a project of Archeworks, collaborated with Doering’s DOE Projects on September 18 in an event titled “Blue Plate Special.” The event called attention to locally grown foods such as blueberries and the positive impact of local food distribution and culture.

Photos of the installation may be seen at www.deborahdoering.com. Those who are interested in hosting a similar installation or event may reach Doering through the contact page of her web site.

Contributor: Deborah Doering