July 11th was Meet the Artists reception evening for my giant fork sculpture, “Say Cheese” in Lafayette, Colorado! Festival Plaza was extremely hot and the sun was beating down even at 6:30pm. But we had a great time with live music, food from local restaurants, wine from Boulder’s Augustina’s Winery and goodie bags for the artists selected for this years exhibit.

Inspiration for the mac and cheese fork came from thinking back to when, as a kid, it was so critically important that all the food groups on my plate not touch each other. Do you remember that?
Do you remember why it was so important? I’ll tell you why. Because when mom placed the green beans down next to the jello, what happened?! What was she thinking? The jello melted and the juice started to make its way toward the mac and cheese? The green bean juice collected and ran the opposite direction toward the mac and cheese. The mac and cheese was in jeopardy! It was about to be contaminated and would become ritually unclean, inedible, unfit for human consumption.

What did you do? Did you panic? No, you didn’t panic. You took steps. You made a dam of several sacrificial noodles to hold back the juices and protect the noodles from tragic cross-contamination. When plate dynamics were under control, it left you time to stab as many noodles as possible onto your fork and eat them all at once. Feeling a little wiggy shortly thereafter, you sat back and relaxed, at which time you discovered the only really proper way to eat mac and cheese – pushing a single noodle on each tine of the fork for a total of four at a time. This, as a kid, was culinary excellence.