The Coleman Center for the Arts (CCA) and the students of Art Club invite you to the Lunch Box Uncut, a one day only pop-up cafeteria in the CCA gallery! Join us on Tuesday, May 1 at 6 pm to enjoy great food and find out what our students have been up to this spring.
The Lunch Box Uncut will showcase the culinary skills and new food ideas our students have mastered this semester. Come enjoy a creative version of a classic school cafeteria meal, make your own smoothie with a bike-powered blender, and share new perspectives on food with our young artists!
This semester, Art Club students thought about relationships between art, food and community. They prepared new meals, worked in the CCA’s community garden, interacted with artists who work with food in person and via Skype, and thought about how creative problem-solving could address local and national food issues. Their weekly lessons included discussions on contemporary art projects and current food events and conceptual kitchen adventures with CCA staff and community chefs. Themes developed over the semester were food is… weird, local, design, ritual, relational and mediated, to name a few.
in “Food is Weird” students tested the physical limits of Twinkies while thinking about cultural ideas of food,:
And as a test of their food knowledge and kitchen skills they were challenged to prepare a meal from the CCA’s local Dixie Gas convenient store:
The semester culminated with the Lunch Box Uncut:
The students’ statement for the Lunch Box Uncut remarks:
“During the last few years, there has been a lot of national debate over the quality, taste, presentation and health benefits of food in school cafeterias. News outlets, parents and young adults are asking more questions about the food served and consumed at schools. Across the country, some students wish for tastier and more interesting options, and some would rather skip lunch altogether than eat in their cafeterias.
We, the students of Art Club, think that school cafeterias are ideal places for ideas and possibilities. The Lunch Box Uncut imagines a new kind of cafeteria.
Our cafeteria promotes health. We eat up to 2,520 lunches in our schools. These lunches at the beginning of our lives affect us for the rest of our lives.
Our cafeteria emphasizes respect. Food can make us feel safe, comfortable and human in our cafeterias.
Our cafeteria empowers creativity. Food can be an educational tool that lets us experiment and express.
Welcome to The Lunch Box Uncut.”
The curriculum of Art Club in spring of 2012 was designed and taught by Jocelyn Edens, Curator of Education at the CCA.
This program is made possible by support from the Alabama State Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Daniel Foundation of Alabama, Americorps VISTA, the Alabama Caring Foundation, the Community Foundation of West Alabama, the University of West Alabama and the many contributions of our individual supporters.