Artist Kirk Rademaker is used to carving visually stunning castles and creatures out of sand, a passion he has developed over 10 years that has taken him from his home base in Santa Cruz, Calif., as far as Antalya, Turkey. Last week, he was in New York working in a very different medium, hummus.
As part of its display at the 54th Summer Fancy Food Show held at the Javitz Center June 29-July 1, Sabra, an appetizing company famous for its chickpea spreads and Mediterranean-style salads, enlisted Rademaker’s help to add three-dimensionality and political relevance to its display. His assignment: sculpt the likeness of each presidential candidate out of Sabra’s signature product.
“When my phone rings, I never know what the job is
going to be,” Rademaker said. This job was also more difficult than his usual work. “With hummus, it’s hard to get the imagery. Sand stays put. Hummus, you push it into place and it globs back down. I was trying to emphasize [Sen. John] McCain’s jowls and his muscular lower face, so when the hummus dropped it wasn’t a problem. When [Sen. Barack] Obama’s high cheekbones kept dropping, he looked more like George Bush.... I stressed more about [Sen.] Hillary [Clinton] than the others. Women are beautiful and I didn't want to do something ugly and caricature-ish.”
Unlike his first job with Sabra, when he created a bust of Mayor Bloomberg for the company’s booth at Kosherfest 2005, Rademaker took more time to prepare this time around. He studied photographs of the presidential hopefuls faces to understand their expressions and worked with clay prototypes for weeks prior to the event.
“I still see hummus as food, not a sculptural medium,” he said. “Sabra sent me sample tubs to work with, and I ate quite a bit of it before I started sculpting.”
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