Candy Heart
Size: Slightly Bigger than a Fist
Medium: Candy
Date: December 2011
Looking back onto your childhood and your birthday parties; was there ever a pinata present? As you know, they are made out of paper mache and can be in any form the crafter chooses (from geometric shapes to unicorns). However, for the most part, most of these pinatas had cute characters or innocent animals because they were for childrens entertainment, and yet, the whole idea is to break the shape open with a stick and get at the candy.
In a project for a concepts class, I had presented the idea of Pinatas as transforming children into very violent and primitive behavior. Obviously, it's only for the sake of fun and getting sugar, but the fact that the shape is most likely representing a living thing, and it is being broken to pieces for food; it highly reminds me of hunting whereas people go for the corpse and get the best tidbits. In that class, I built a pinata, and demonstrated the violence of destroying it.
The unfortunate pinata (built out of loose cardboard and colorful tissue paper, built into a puppy shape to further appeal to the audience to symphasize with pinata violence) who was broken to pieces as a demonstration.
After that project, I decided to work further into it, and hand-constructed a heart made completely out of various candy. The central core is a mixture of bubble gum balls and soft gum, then slowly encased with softer red-colored candies such as Now-And-Laters and Starbursts. The viens are incorporated by using purple starbursts, and the entire thing is coated with a sticky strawberry jam. This piece would actually had been edible if it was made in a more sterile way!
The heart was actually a "joke" project, in which my professor approved of. If it wasn't for the children sentiment, it could possibly be marketed and then placed in pinatas as the "ultimate prize candy".Ā Would you REALLY eat that though?
