You Are What You Eat?

A goal of performance art is to shine a spotlight on a particular action, value or assumption by asking the viewer to become involved.

It is helpful to keep this idea in mind when considering Leah Piepgras’s latest project.

 The project is titled Consumption Dinnerware.

The images on the dinnerware are of the body parts involved in digestion: inside the cup is an image of the saliva glands and the oral cavity; the saucer contains the esophagus; the salad plate, the liver, gall bladder, stomach and pancreas; the dinner plate, the small intestines; and the dessert plate, the rectum.

A place setting sells for $720.00

 The china is delicately done in shades of blues; on closer inspection the organs are readily identifiable.

Originally acrylic paintings photographed for ease of image transfer to china, she allows that the depictions have an “x-ray feel.”

 Piepgras carefully picked her manufacturer, preferring an American company for quality purposes.

She ultimately chose Pickard, the company that “makes china for the White House,” and bills itself as the “America’s oldest fine china company.” The pieces are thin and finely crafted, as fine china is.

 The project was first conceived a few years back, when Piepgras painted her dining room table.

The table, 3 by 6 feet, is done in shades of blue acrylic, and features a long, red intestine along the length of the table. At first glance, the table is lovely, with small red flowers floating in blue; the true nature of the long red column takes a few seconds longer to sink in.

 “Consuming beauty, food, conversation nourishes the soul and the body” says Piepgras, who sees the table, and her place settings, as a way to remind her diners of that connection.

 Trained as a sculptor and performance artist at the Kansas City Art Institute and Carnegie Mellon, Piepgras regularly built visual tableaux with performance in mind. She only turned to painting after the birth of her first child.

 In the context of her training she says, “it didn’t make sense to paint something I could make.”

 She notes that the basic of modern design is that form follows function. In ergonomic design the goal is to fit the body--the body informs the visual context of what you’re using.

Piepgras just takes this concept just one step farther.

 One’s body is “fate on a molecular level, destiny preprogrammed … how you relate to the world,” Piepgras says.

So, to use the human body as way to make her viewers more mindful, more aware of their experience, seemed like a natural extension of her interests.

 A quick look at her paintings confirms the body plays a central role in her work.

 She adds that, with the right presence of mind, one can experience “daily life as art performance.”

 So, how does Piepgras want diners to experience her place settings?

 She wants them to “think about the body and the present,” so that the act of eating together with others is a “meditative experience.”

 When asked whether she worries that potential diners may find her dinnerware too literal to want to eat off of, Piepgras is nonplussed.

“Get comfortable with your own body,” she urges others. She adds, “I guess I take it for granted that I’m comfortable with the skin I’m in.”

 To see Piepgras’s Consumption Dinnerware, as well as more of her work, go to her website at http://www.leahpiepgras.com/objects/gallery/consumption/index.php