Edible Icons
The underlying theme of Judi Harvest's work is the fragility of life and the search and transformation of beauty. Edible Icons involves a labor-intensive process of gold-leafing matzo, which the artist documents in her first self-made video.
Passover is a holiday in the spring which celebrates the exodus from Egypt and freedom from slavery for the Jewish people. Seder means order in Hebrew and Passover is a holiday built around discussions. Matzos cook for eighteen minutes and the number eighteen in Hebrew means life. The artist creates an edition of 18 matzos each year.
The first Edible Icon was made in 1991 as a Passover Seder gift in New York, upon returning from living in Venice, Italy where she learned to gold-leaf. "Every matzo surface is unique. The gold leafing process of 108 matzos for an exhibition becomes a Zen-like experience. There is a beginning, middle and an end. The idea that the Edible Icons are easily stacked and moved from place to place symbolizes the nomadic existence of the Jewish people. There was no time to bake bread, a staple of life in every culture therefore matzo could possibly be the first fast food."
Edible Icons is minimal visually and maximal in content. The final segment documents the installation of the 108 gold leafed matzos at The Chautauqua Center for the Visual Arts in July, 2000, which was accompanied by a conference with Barbara Rose, Art Historian and Judi Harvest.
This work is to remind us that freedom, although never easy and constantly work, is golden.
