Beef Cow Sculpture and Artist Statement

For my transformation project, I was inspired by Tom Friedman, an artist who made a sculpture of himself completely out of sugar cubes. I was inspired by the simplicity of the cubes, and the obsession that went into it's creation. I've created a small sculpture of a cow, out of beef bouillon cubes.

I think the sculpture makes a statement to American crippling food industry. A beef cube is composed almost entire of salt, with added beef "flavor". No beef is involved, so it's not surprising that no one associated them with beef, cow, or meat for that matter. Also, it's made from 189 cubes, if your curious.

RUNNING TOTAL: 189 cubes.

I had a slight accident with the head, which decided to fall off overnight. I had to apply much more glue to its neck line than I wanted, but it's staying. Not going to get much on craft because of that aspect I think. The cubes have started sucking in all the moisture in the air and are getting soft and crumbling. Therefore I'm applying heavy amounts of hot glue to keep it sturdy.

Words to describe it now would be:

• ironic
• brown
• cubist
• large
• heavy
• dense
• smelly
• SMELLY
• SMEEELLLLYYY
• gross
• decaying
• structure

Cubist Cow Sketch

Here's a couple sketches of the cow I'm working on. Needs some work in the area of the udders, but pretty good proportions if I do say so myself.

Almost finished. Pics coming soon.

One Winco trip later and...

I'm ready to start getting serious with this cow sculpture...

Beef bouillon cubes serve a purpose for cooking, to add flavor. What are they adding exactly though? Well, I found its actually tons and TONS of salt.

• brown
• cube
• salty
• flavor
• small
• packed
• individual
• wrapped

These Things Smell

B. A. D.

Seriously, they smell disgusting. Like beef and salt. I had to start wearing gloves. I cover my nose with my shirt too. Since I'm working in my kitchen, the entire apartment now smells.

Transformation Art Project Brainstorm List

For our next project in art, we are to transform an every day object into something else. Laurie showed us lots of awesome examples and I compiled a list of objects I could possibly use.

1. chop sticks
2. sugar cubes
3. beef bouillon cubes?!
4. chocolate chip cookiesw
5. toothpicks
6. cutlery
7. ipad
8. film
9. light bulbs
10. toilet paper rolls
11. matches
12. cell phones
13. baby doll
14. pink flamingo
15. clothes
16. money
17. wallet
18. reward cards (from albertsons, best buy, fred meyer, etc)
19. gum balls

After asking some of my peers questions about these objects, I found something interesting about the beef bouillon cubes. People associated them with flavor, soup, broth, but never... COW.

Since beef is a cow, it made me think of how fake they actually are. They have nothing to do with cows, because its all just fake flavoring. I think doing some kind of cow sculpture out of them would be an interesting narrative about the food industry, what we consider "food", and how we as consumers choose food to buy.