CECIL ESTEVES FREIRE, ESJ/HUMANISTIC STUDIES, 2027
Hello… I like food and funny things.
Project Overview
I was really interested all semester in the smells of the lab. Bready, yeasty, cheesy, stinky, fishy, spoiled, and savory are all words to describe smells there. I think about food a lot, so I keep making projects about food. I really wanted to make pasta, so I did. I thought it would be funny to serve a dish that was inedible but looked edible, or mimicked food, kind of like how I really wanted to chew on my cellulose but was absolutely not allowed to (also, the smell of the autoclave… yummy… they should not be letting hungry people in there). So basically here are my charming little “bowtie” (farfalle) pasta. I made the bowl (floating blue on stoneware) and my friend made the cup (oribe and waxy seafoam, maybe? Also stoneware, I think), and I dyed the fabric I photographed it on. Apologies for the not-so-great photos. (The other items were last-minute additions, I initially only presented the bowl with the pasta inside).
Process
Welcome to Chez Biolab, for tonight’s special, we have a lovely pasta dish… made with glycerol-treated bacterial cellulose in a really light sauce (air) served with a cup of our finest house media… in handmade ceramic dishes, very eco-friendly local small business hidden gem core.
My pellicle was super normal all things considered (we had some freaky contamination this semester). I grew it in the rectangular Pyrex. It was light, like it was white and had almost no color, wasn’t too thick but was really lumpy bumpy. I did a test out of the little circular pellicles, one with glycerol and one with nothing, and felt like the glycerol was more appropriate for trying to shape/manipulate it like I wanted to. I was also told by our lab tech that glycerol was the most eco-friendly in terms of disposal after use, and as the thoughtful earthy-crunchy ESJ student that I am I felt like that was appropriate.
The pellicle dried pretty quickly, faster than I expected, and I had intended on using clips or clothespins of some kind to hold the pasta folds together as it dried, but by the time I went to pick it up from the lab it was already all the way dry. I pivoted to sewing, and each pasta was cut, gently folded, held in place with one tiny stitch in similar-colored thread right in the middle, and then decorated with the little zigzag edge. I would’ve used pinking shears if I had them but I did not so I used regular scissors and patience. They’re really cute and smell a little like feet/cheese/stinky as many pellicles do.
Learn More
Here’s my contact just in case:
cestevesfreire@gmail.com (I actually check my email)
cestevesfreire@mica.edu
@dozingggreen on Instagram