STRAY EGGPLANT
An ongoing conceptual art project by Laura Gentry
Press
An article by Sandra Knebel
Printed in the Waukon Standard
Waukon, Iowa
Printed in the Waukon Standard
Waukon, Iowa
Eggplants are no longer just for cooking and eating. In Pastor Laura Gentry's studio, they have been transformed into an art object dedicated to humor, art, mysticism, and a new way to communicate.
For many, eggplant is a foreign object, a purple mass they pass up in the produce aisle. Others try to repress memories of oil-soaked, tasteless slabs that were served up in their childhood But the eggplant has grown up. As a result of the creativity of Laura Gentry, Pastor of Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Lansing, stray eggplants have escaped from the dinner table to the collectibles table.
What does a stray eggplant look like? Well, it still has the familiar purple body with a leafy green stem. It's roundness has been flattened. Still 3-dimensional, they can sit up on their own on a shelf. It's surface is now ceramic. The front is no longer plain. Each of Laura's 115 stray eggplants has a one-only random quote on the surface. Random quotes found on four of the eggplants read: "We've gone on holiday by mistake;" "How dare they? How dare they!" "This is going to be my Driving Miss Daisy;" "She's usually an eggplant."
This last quote was in fact the motivator for Laura's newest art project. "I once overheard someone say that about me," she explains. "I found it most amusing. It was this comment that served as the impetus for my stray eggplant show. It is an exercise in randomness. No two stray eggplants have the same quote." For quotes, Laura and her husband, William, drew from things they overheard people say over the years that they thought were funny. Some were favorite movie lines. Some were quotes they read in the newspaper. What makes the quotes so offbeat is that they are so out of context. It's that aspect that's very random.
"Stray" plays into the randomness that is part of the eggplant's new persona. The eggplants will be randomly sold through Art-o-mat. Since 1997 Art-o-mat machines in art museums, coffee shops, and various locations have been vending cellophane-wrapped original works to art buyers. In the United States there are currently 71 active machines (refurbished cigarette machines). For about $5 buyers have the thrill of pulling the knob and receiving a cigarette-pack-sized art treasure. So far, the Gentrys have sold pieces at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Project One in Newport, Rhode Island, the Kentucky Center in Louisville and in New Orleans.
The Art-o-mat form generally consists of a small print affixed to a painted wooden block. The Gentrys first used this form of distribution with their "Living Word" project. That project was photos of 100 people wearing T-shirts displaying the one word that each thought best described who they were. "Living Word" sold like wildfire and are still selling. Laura is hoping for the same kind of success with her "Stray Eggplants."
"Random" enters into the distribution in that the buyer does not know which eggplant they'll get when they pull the lever. In Laura's words, "I compare it to blowing the seeds of a dandelion into the wind. You have no idea where it will go or what impact it will have."
Making the stray eggplants was very time consuming and tedious so Laura solicited the help of three members of the children's choir at her Lansing church. She and her husband, William, then brainstormed all kinds of quote possibilities, sorted through them, and choose those that seemed just right. "Next," she said, "I built the eggplant models from clay, had them fired, and hand-painted them purple and green with the help of Alyssa and Samantha Rosas. I typed the quotes on the computer using an old-fashioned type. They were printed off with white writing on a purple paper background. Then I cut out the quotes, glued each to an eggplant, and applied a shiny lacquer coating. They were then placed into a box that had been hand stamped with a linoleum block that said 'Stray Eggplant.' Taylor Joe assisted by running the press. Then the eggplant, together with a note to the buyer, were boxed and wrapped in cellophane and mailed off to North Carolina where Art-o-Mat will send them on their way to their temporary homes in vending machines throughout the country and beyond."
A note in each box, Laura says, will explain to the buyer that their purchase is not just about stray eggplants with comic quotes; rather, it is an invitation to the buyer to participate in the art show planned as a follow-up to the sales. "We want the buyers to communicate with us," she said. “ We want to know who bought the stray eggplants, where they live, how they like the quote and how they interpreted its meaning and what kind of impact it might have had. We are asking the buyers to use their own creativity to compose a photo of themselves with their eggplant and send it to us (everyone has a digital camera nowadays.)"
Gentrys thought is that someone who buys art out of a vending machine is most likely creative, so she hopes for some unusual correspondence like poems, songs, etc. "Most artists never know how the buyer really feels about the art piece," Laura says. "I want my art to have impact but would also like it to be interactive and open up two way communication. There are so many millions of people out there that have an interesting story. This is a way of finding people completely at random, people we would never meet or connect with otherwise. I get to meet cool people who will be part of my art show-- how exciting is that!" And, too, she will find out where her eggplants have strayed.
Her next art exhibit, then, will not be the eggplants; rather, the photos and letters that come from around the country - maybe even around the world - that tell how each buyer responded to their piece of original art that, much like limited edition prints, is one out of only 115 in existence.
Why an eggplant? "I have always been into eggplants," says Laura. "I just think they are beautiful, but also kind of silly and playful--as far as vegetables go! I used to make various comments about eggplants that later came back to visit me. How it happened was that as a drama student, I had to choreograph a dance about grocery shopping for a dance festival in Montana. I was acting out the part of a zucchini. I came running across the stage calling out 'Zucchini' with as much verge and vitality as I could sum up. The person videotaping the production heard me call myself a zucchini and responded with 'What did she say? Zucchini? She is usually an eggplant.'" Laura says she took the comment as a compliment. It also sparked the idea of the stray eggplant art project. "I thought it was such great fun," she said, "that I used 'she is usually an eggplant' as one of the project quotes.
Another quote that comes with a good story is "I've consumed copious amounts of wow." While on vacation, Laura was eating a lot of snack food. As they were driving, she was in the middle of saying , "I have consumed copious amounts of…" when William drove around a ridge and a lake appeared. The beautiful scene that lay in front of her brought out a surprised "Wow!" It was a juxtaposition that made perfect sense. Laura knew instantly that "I consumed copious amounts of wow" would be perfect on one of her stray eggplants. To take a peak at some of the stray eggplants, and see the pictures and writings of the new eggplant owners as they arrive, visit strayeggplant.com.
What happens when these limited edition eggplants run out? Well, there's some zucchini waiting in the wings!
