What do you do when your relative gives you a giant bag of bottle caps?
If you are Maumee artist Kelly Brown, you start your own line of miniature food art.
“They sat in my studio in a box for a couple of years and then I got the inspiration for what to do, finally, with those bottle caps,” said Brown, 45, who has a fine arts degree in illustration from the Columbus College of Art & Design.
It was tiny pies that were created from those pieces of used aluminum.
Now, from the depths of her basement studio spill forth tiny tacos, burritos, doughnuts, bags of popcorn, sushi rolls, cups of coffee, hamburgers with all the trimmings, boxes of French fries, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
But don’t expect to see her mini pieces — most made into magnets — to be formed from clay. Brown, who also owns Art by Kelly, and who does faux finishing and mixed media painting, said polymer clay isn’t a medium she prefers to work in, so she researched and tested other materials to make her pieces.
“There are different media that makes all of these — beads and glue and plaster and paint — and that’s what started the whole idea that you don’t have to use polymer clay, you can use literally anything from the world around you, especially items that people throw out, and turn them into cute little art pieces,” she said.
She creates templates for Chinese takeout on the computer, paints tiny boxes to place resin doughnuts in, and cuts tiny taco shells from felt. She paints wood plates and fills them with tiny eggs and bacon, and uses old eye makeup to brown small pieces of toast. She records what works — and what doesn’t — in a book filled with pages of notes and sketches.
“There’s been a lot of trial and error,” she said. “I get lost in it, I’m excited by it. I’ll test things and leave them to dry come down in the morning and see, oh, that didn’t work.”
Brown said an audience’s reaction is what keeps her creating.
“They are buying the popcorn for the friend who loves popcorn, and they have to get a taco for the diehard Taco Tuesday people. It just brings a little smile, no pun intended, to people unexpectedly, and that’s part of the joy,” she said.
For more information, go to minimiscellaneous.com.
First Published December 8, 2019, 3:00 p.m.
