Food Carving Puts Creative Expression on Your Plate

by Meredith Mullins on November 1, 2012

Jack-o'-lantern faces, made by food carving

Pumpkins carved into jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween
© Thinkstock

It’s OK to Play with your Food

Doorsteps, stores, and fields bask in the glow of orange at the moment. It’s pumpkin time again. Good for pie making. And good for carving.

The art of creating scary jack-o’-lanterns for Halloween has been a longstanding tradition for food carving fans. But pumpkins are just the tip of the garden. Now I see creative expression in a whole genre of food art, and it’s evolving at a rapid pace.

Have Your Art and Eat It, Too

O yes, I C a whole new world. We make art out of wood, stone, metal, animal hair, hide, cloth, paper, canvas, water, mud, snow, and more—just about every element you can think of. So why not food?

Watermelon in the shape of a rose, made by for carving

Watermelon carving
© Thinkstock

Fruit and vegetable carving has been an art in Asia since ancient times. Now we have chocolate sculptures, biscuit cities, life-size butter figures, bok choy fish, eggplant penguins, and linguini portraits gracing our art and culinary worlds.

Pumpkin with a fish bas-relief made by food carving

Pumpkin bas-relief
© Thinkstock

Food artworks are fleeting. A natural decomposition, of course, takes place. This transience makes the work all the more beautiful.

For example, like British artist Andy Goldsworthy’s magnificent environmental sculptures, which last only as long as gravity, wind, and rain permit—time changes everything.

The Imagination Ingredient

The variety of materials in the food art medium is limited only by the imagination. And, as you can see by the creative work of the Hungarian artist Tamás Balla in this video, the imagination has no limits.

If the video does not display, watch it here.

While you watched, did you hear your parents saying, “Don’t play with your food”? Or, did you marvel at the the creative expression of an artist who works with food?

For me, in this tug of war, the artist won out, and my Oh, I see moment was clear—search for the artist within and carve away.

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