This month, Spotlight is the headlamp of a scooter.
It is driving through town streets with
a stack of pizzas in the back. Those flat
square boxes often look plain. Yet
sometimes they are as unexpected as anchovies and ground beef, as gripping as
artichoke and gorgonzola.
What art do people put on pizza boxes?
I can be as creative as what people put on pizzas. And as inspired, or as much of a belly flop.
Art is disposable. Face it, if it’s still on the wall at home
after 5 years, unless it is unavoidable view, it gets looked at for 3 hours or
20 minutes per year. Which may be
gratifying when we consider that the garlic bread gets as much attention as the
pizza box. Including if you didn’t get
any garlic bread.
Something I love about pizza box art is
that it nails home these truths about what we produce with any sense of
viewership. If your art is done for the
love of painting or sketching then you are free from this spicy curse. Enjoy the fun.
Another beauty of this format is its restriction. 8 inches or Twelve-and-a-half, or some other diameter-based inchy square. In one ink tone, or two, or maybe 5 if the boxey guys have some budget and a lot of love.
In a couple of years
a 360,442 colour palette will no doubt be available to every printing optimist..
But in the recent past, and the present, a restrictive food-safe hair-colour-range
palette is what can be slapped onto cardboard.
It focuses the mind. Like the painting
scene being ‘oil on canvas’ or watercolour, or… or something that doesn’t fit into those
boxes. Like public sculpture being bronze
or stone. Stuck in the Bronze Age or the
Stone Age. Haiku is not the only
poetry. It focuses the mind
superbly. “Fruit” is not the only way to
treat an orange.
Money is funny. In art, the frame is the bit that yields to production costs and the market. The cost of the frame is pretty much the same.
The painting can be a gift to a friend, or sell for a thousand Euros. That same frame still cost the same. With a pizza, the box can be the art, while the art oil-n-cheese on canvas dough, and the price doesn’t range from zero to insane.
Art is food too, and the money is up to
you.
Next time you get a pizza, don’t throw
the box. Grab some pens. Get your paints out. Have a laugh. An edge-you-cational arts
experiment.
Then savour the garlic bread
and sleep with a twelve inch smile.
