Image: Catherine McEver

Artist Catherine McEver uses an unexpected medium for her embroidery projects: Wonder Bread. Working "very, very carefully," she stitches the colorful floss into scenes from nature (chicken, fish, flowers), and an homage to Van Gogh's "Starry Night." If you're thinking these pieces are some sort of commentary on temporality, think again: says McEver, "I have a couple of slices that are over four years old that look just like new." Gives new meaning to "wonder," huh? Additional pictures below.

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Filioppo Ioco, "Butter Top"

An edible art exhibit? Sounds great. An edible art exhibit at the World Erotic Art Museum in Miami? Even better. Renowned body painter, Filioppo Ioco's fine art exhibit Fun Foods (warning: Flash site) focuses on the body as a delicacy. The exhibit features photos depicting nude models rolled into tasty treats and painted accordingly. Images of people hidden in oozing piles of pancakes, banana splits and s'mores has us worried about the vegans out there for a minute, but don't sweat; there are one or two sexy carrots included in the set. While some are tongue in cheek (for example, the penis-shaped bomb pop), many of them challenge you to find the model in amongst the food. Photographs from the exhibit below the jump (do we even need to tell you NSFW?).

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Photograph via The Hypothetical Library

What kind of wedding present do you get for the couple who has everything (or whose wedding you forgot about)? You can do what poet Jennifer L. Knox did and give them a copy of Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything (buy it) with Bittman's name scratched out and your own name written in with a sharpie. And if you're as awesome as Knox, you could also glue in a new introduction telling an inspirational, heartwarming story, which features throwing acid in bears' faces, Partridge Family tattoos and nude bowling on acid.

See the rest of Knox's handiwork (including the introduction) after the jump:

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Still from Lunch.

Ready to watch something pretty weird? Famous for his stop-motion animation, Czech director Jan Švankmajer's 1992 short film Food depicts three restaurant meals and the diners who eat them. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner feature people dying and coming back to life, eating non-food items like utensils and tablecloths, and practicing cannibalism and self-mutilation. Švankmajer originally conceived the project in the 1970s but feared the tempestuous political climate of the time. Prepare yourself for some heady, Eastern Bloc weltschmerz below. (warning: Lunch is slightly NSFW, Dinner is definitely NSFW.)

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Ham from The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, 1950. Scan: Eat Me Daily

The 1950s were a crossover period for cookbooks, when graphics were about half hand-drawn illustrations and half super-saturated photographs, such as the one above. If the aesthetic appears rather commercial to you, that's no mistake: many of the cookbooks from this era were produced by companies to promote their products, most famous of which is the Betty Crocker series for General Mills. Below, we explore the colorful world of 1950s food imagery. (Warning: image heavy post.)

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Photograph: Adam Robb / Eat Me Daily

Eight works of modern art served as Jennifer Rubell's inspiration for the meal at last night's Brooklyn Ball. Following the food artist's Futurism-inspired Performa 09 dinner, this time she provided guests with everything from a Champagne tinkling take on Dadaism to a crushing self-portrait of a pop art icon. Abstract expressionism, minimalism, post modern and performance art were all made palatable in an interactive meal that transformed galleries to banquet halls and diners to players as guests indulged in nearly every genre of 20th Century art. (Warning: Image heavy post.)

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The Andy Warhol Pinata before his beating. Photograph: Adam Robb / Eat Me Daily

Last night at the Brooklyn Museum the worlds of art, food and fashion united to celebrate High Style with a dinner curated by Jennifer Rubell, whose food-art installations have redefined benefit dinners. Below, we dish on who was there, what they did, and most importantly, what they ate.

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William Pettit

Hopefully you're reading Top of the Food Chain, one of our newer columns in which Ryan Adams discusses the particulars of different cuts of meat. Artist William Pettit certainly is, and noticed something peculiar about them: the photos we use the illustrate the specific variations on the cuts, which come from an out of print edition of the North American Meat Processors guide, are uncannily similar to a series of paintings he did in 2005. Pettit had never seen the NAMP images before he read Ryan's column; the untitled paintings are done from life.

A sampling of Pettit's work, as well as his thoughts on his process, below.

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Photograph: DesignMarketo

FoodMarketo, a joint venture between online design store DesignMarketo and Apartamento Magazine, is a pop-up design store/cooking workshop that will take place during Milan Design Week, April 14-19.

Aside from jam and bread-baking workshops that are free and open to the public, the pop-up store will also contain products commissioned to more than 30 international designers and an interior designed by Max Lamb and Lars Frideen. We talked to Marco Velardi of Apartamento about the genesis of the store, and how the designers mix food and design, below.

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Apple was most taken with Jolicur's assertion that it was, "the beef jerky that got [him]." It's always the beef jerky, George. Hit the jump for the full-sized version of the drawing.

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Dustin Wayne Harris, "Chloe 2"

Demanding a home-made cake after a first date may not seem the surest way to a girl's heart, but for photographer Dustin Wayne Harris it is the best way to make an early connection. Says Harris, "Whereas some people consult astrologers, read Tarot cards, or tea leafs to predict the future, cakes tell it all." We think that the photographs of his lovers' cakes—sometimes messy, sometimes quasi-professional, usually colorful—say as much about the photographer as they do about the bakers. Is he commenting on gender roles in relationships? The sexual nature of food? Or does he merely have a sweet tooth? Decide for yourself: photos are on view at Heist Gallery in New York until April 18th, or sample some below.

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According to the old 17th-century English nursery rhyme "Old King Cole was a merry old soul," which is perhaps why he often depicted feasting in a court of jovial revelers. A 30-foot paneled mural of such a scene by Maxfield Parrish is one of the trademarks of the bar in the famous St. Regis Hotel in New York City. According to tavern lore, Parrish competed with his fellow artists to find a way to depict the king's unfortunate flatulence problem. The embarrassed looking grin on the face of the king paired with the surprised expressions on the knight's faces was Parish's answer to the problem.

A similar panel by the Italian-born artist Guido d'Aquili commissioned in the early twenties by a social club in Trenton, New Jersey also depicts the Old King Cole story. The sheepish grin upon the king's face is similar to the Parrish panels and the inclusion of a stubborn donkey (ass) appears to be a further jab at the king upon his throne. Food takes the center stage in the second panel titled "Ye Bowle" as a great silver tureen is carried into the court referencing the third line, "He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl." The panels are pictured below.

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This Christmas is the 22nd anniversary of the Peter Norton Christmas Project, a series of limited-edition artworks once only available to those on the software pioneer's personal Nice list (see a 2005 NYT writeup for more info). Commissioned to make contemporary art more accessible, the artists' creations were unavailable to the general public until this year when Norton donated the remainder of his ungifted presents to MoMA's Design Store, with proceeds benefiting PS1. Works over the years have taken on the form of everything from condoms to music boxes, with three editions focusing on food and drink.

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Liva Rutmane. Left: Almost Sunset 01. Right: Almost Sunset 03.

Liva Rutmane is an art student in Riga, Latvia who sells some of her work on Etsy. She describes herself: "I like strange things, lot's of paint and everything colorful. I am amazed by popular cultures way of expression, but at the same time I am interested in underground and good books, so it doesn't go together very well, so my art is a strange mix of everything incompatible." Among her illustrations, drawings, and prints available for purchase, we were particularly impressed with her photo series "Almost Sunset" (NSFW). Signed, numbered, and dated, the prints are generously-sized at 28" x 28" and will set you back $440.00 a piece.

More photos from the 'Almost Sunset' series (NSFW) »

"Uncle Jello" by Nouar. Photograph via Corey Helford Gallery

Currently on display at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, CA is "The Multiplane Group Show" which includes the piece "Uncle Jello" by the artist Nouar (previously profiled on EMD). She also posted some great behind-the-scenes shots on her blog revealing the process in making it, and she graciously allowed us to repost them:

Process shots »

Currently on display at BachmannEckenstein JapaneseArt in Basel, Switzerland is the exhibit "The Beauty of Mended Ceramics" featuring Kintsugi ("golden joinery"), the 15th and 16th century Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with a lacquer resin sprinkled with powdered gold. The Smithsonian's website has a good writeup of the technique, explaining that it became so popular that people deliberately broke their own pottery so could have it repaired "in the hope that kintsugi mends might increase their aesthetic and commercial value.". Through January 22nd, 2009.

Back in November, Carl Warner (responsible for many of the foodscape photographs you may have come across) was commissioned by the Good Food channel in the UK to make an edible version of the London skyline. The Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, the Tower Bridge, St Paul's Cathedral, and the Gherkin all get the treatment. The making of video explains how he did it:

More photos + a making-of video »

"Peace Dance Art," Natalie Kovacs. Photograph kindly provided by Jorge Rivas.

Corporate and art synergy! Ben & Jerry’s teamed up with Morgans Hotel Group and Interview Magazine to bring "Peace Dance Art" to Art Basel Miami Beach this year with a "dance intervention" by public performance art curator Natalie Kovacs. Several hundred ice cream lovers gathered on the beach to create a "human peace" before enjoying ice cream and a show by synchronized swimmers performing to John Lennon's "Imagine" (see video below). “In the quest to obtain peace, which is possible in our lifetimes, conducting a live art performance at Art Basel is the cherry on top of our sundae,” says Walt Freese, CEO of Ben & Jerry's, also known as Chief Euphoria Officer. See the video of our interview with Freese below:

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"Corner Store" by Okay Mountain. Photograph: Elizabeth Jones / Eat Me Daily

A rising star at Art Basel Miami Beach, Okay Mountain, a collective of eleven young Austin-based artists, presented "Corner Store." Featuring a vast assortment of hilariously odd treats including Wolf Meat, Kool Zesty Ranch Zest and Craps Candy, the packaging brought to mind Wacky Packages and Claes Oldenburg's "The Store," an abandoned store rented by the artist in Lower Manhattan in New York in 1961.

"Based on the eclectic and quirky independently-owned convenience marts found throughout Texas and the greater southwest region, the store offers fairgoers a variety of handmade products at 'convenient' prices," wrote the Wall Street Journal. The installation won this year's PULSE prize.

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Photograph: Elizabeth Jones / Eat Me Daily

In the piece "Die Burger" by the Broooklyn-based artist collective The Bruce High Quality Foundation at Art Basel Miami Beach, the "meat" is made of felt, the "cheese" is lard, and the "buns" are from Burger King. The video on the screen is a reworking of the video of Andy Warhol eating a hamburger. According to their mission statement, the BHQF aspires to "invest the experience of public space with wonder, to resurrect art history from the bowels of despair, and to impregnate the institutions of art with the joy of man’s desiring."

More photos + a video »