Playing With Your Food (Broccoli Jacks)

Jacks is a children’s game where a player throws a ball in the air and attempts to capture metal pronged “jack” pieces before the ball falls. A game of speed and precision, jacks has been and remains the subject of many a school recess or playtime session.

“Playing With Your Food” depicts twelve stalks of broccoli that resemble the shapes of jacks - with the heads of the broccolis resembling the four rounded tips of the jacks and with the broccoli spears shaped to match the jacks’ pointed tips. By combining a food often hated by children with a beloved game, the work recalls another nostalgic memory - the act of playing with your food.

Growing up in a dysfunctional household that, despite many arguments and even violent moments over meals, still upheld the familial tradition of nightly sit-down dinners, the artist attempts to contrast childlike playfulness and imagination against the fragility of the ceramic medium. During the artist’s childhood, a loving meal with family could switch to censure and abuse in the drop of a hat - or in the case of jacks, a ball - due to her father’s unpredictable temperament. The work draws parallels to those moments by depicting the game of jacks through ceramics - a children’s game too fragile to play with and a dinner table unsafe for childlike mealtime play.

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