Carolyn Speranza

Lisa Link and Io Palmer invited me to participate in their Serve & Project, an interdisciplinary collaborative public arts project seeking dinner napkins from creative thinkers around the world. Part of their curatorial vision is that while food references sustenance it also represents social and political issue.

“Reaping What We’ve Sown,” below, is my contribution to the project.  The napkins are linen, initially dyed with chamomile tea, and then painted on, with a  sumi brush and ink, and finally, the digital imagery was ironed on.  My thoughts about food these days range from the young girls, pre- child labor laws, shelling shrimp in Louisiana for the rest of us to eat – to – Monsanto corn – to – the overfishing of our oceans.  Statistically, the size of fish/shellfish has dropped astronomically over the past century, due to over-fishing. This food landscape painting is about 52″ long, 17″ high.  Here is a detailed view:

Lisa Link‘s artwork:

No one here listens to me when I try to explain chemicals in the food and all this other stuff that is bad for you. Trevor just doesn’t believe it even though his family has a lot of health issues due to diet and now not sure the kids listen. So, here is what I made, with my emails from the Environmental Working Group – fighting to get BPA out of cans….

Here’s the details for the May 4 to May 22, 2012 exhibition:

Serve and Project Kitchen Gallery Exhibit
Park National Bank Art Gallery
Clermont College
University of Cincinnati

In the meantime, I’d like to thank my friendly reference librarian at Penn State who assisted me in locating the over-fishing imagery.  You can find the originals and more here: