Spontaneous Civility
Cooking on the Street was a performance project transforming an anonymous space into a community gathering, which took place on a corner of Pass-a-Grille, Florida for four months. Each Sunday, food was served to friends and strangers alike and the community was invited to stitch together a tablecloth made of pearls and the artist's old family dish towels from Italy.
I recontextualized an urban space, through the use of food served on a busy street corner to both neighbors and strangers, into a community based public place. I also recontextualized the action of cooking by placing it outside of a domestic sphere. I transgressed rules of normal street behavior and I redefined the role of artist in a community that associates artists only with traditional art forms, i.e. sculpture and painting.A secondary part of the project involved the participation of the community in making a special tablecloth for the table used in the street event, completely covered with pearls.