Experimental Dinners
Stretching boundaries and pushing comfort zones for familiar and "polite" table practices. Drawing on global dining traditions, how can a unique object or reconfigured setting change the social norms of a shared meal?
Ambiguous Implements
An exploration of organic and unexpected shapes in tableware. In a collaboration with Steinbeisser, Amsterdam, and guided by artist and metalsmith Rachael Colley, the outputs of this collection sought to reinvigorate passive eating tools with experimental techniques. This work is inspired by Mediterranean and Middle Eastern food traditions of passing, sharing, dipping, scooping, and community building around a table.
A Disruptive Dinner
A slight alteration to a mundane activity, which changes the way we interact with each other. This collection is an investigation of a shared dinner as an environment for behavior manipulation through the objects on the table. These handmade tablewares were used to facilitate such subversions between friends and strangers in a dinner party setting.
Disruptive Dinner: The Party
A collection of wooden plates and bowls with hidden magnets embedded in the bottom, alongside a set of 3D printed cups with holes designed to spill as the user drinks. The participants were invited to the meal under the pretense of evaluating the various designs of the tablewares. Their reactions were recorded and they all participated in a group discussion after dinner was over
Table Residuals
A curated gallery opening dinner of Embodied Recollections. This collaborative exhibition drew upon themes of family, history, nostalgia, and time. This installation highlights the beauty of a communal meal, but also to challenges the conventions of appropriate settings for eating and socializing. Alongside all of the wooden pieces, I crafted a menu of highly pigmented foods with the intention of leaving a physical imprint on the tablecloth, which would remain in the gallery space for the remainder of the show.
Indoor Picnic (v1)
The Fifth Season was a picnic hosted in mid-January, conceived as a gift for a friend with a winter birthday who wanted to celebrate outside despite snow on the ground and a 4pm sunset.
Together with a collaborator interested in indoor/outdoor relationships, we manufactured our own uncanny season inside a third-floor apartment: a hardwood meadow of astroturf and inflatable pools, whole carrots and pudding cups, finger foods eaten with feet in a patch of dirt. An eclectic guest list of toddlers and adults alike navigated the space with equal curiosity, letting go of expectations as they settled into their January oasis.
"Why don't we always eat like this?" someone said. That's the point.