I know I’m way behind on posting stuff from the gummy demo and class, but I have to post one particular photo from the July 10, 2011 Day of Sharing here in Austin.
After I did my gummy demo, the amazing Ruth Rickey did one on molding baby faces and creating awesome little figurines. The whole time she was talking about her favourite flexible silicone face molds, all I wanted to do was run up there with a baster full of gummy. But I didn’t, because that would have been rude.
I noticed Ruth looking my way a few times and she said something about wanting to try playing with gummy when she got back home, but still, it would have been really wrong and rude to run up there with a baster full of gummy. And messy. Rude, wrong, and messy. Yes.
But after her demo it turned out that those of us sitting at the raffle table didn’t get her handout, so I went up to her and asked for that. She looked at her molds, and so did I. Then we looked at each other. She said, “I’ve been wondering how the gummy would work in these.”
I blurted, “Oh my god I totally wanted to run up here and put gummy in those the whole time you were talking!”
She handed them to me purposefully, so I ran through the hall with them, back to where I had my pots and basters, cackling like a madwoman the entire time.
Then while we waited for them to set up in my cooler (which takes ridiculously long compared to a fridge), she said a bazillion hugely complimentary things to me, several of which I at first assumed were indicating someone else. After all, this was Ruth Rickey, Master Sugar Artist, winner of enough awards to cover a wall, table, and then some. She ROCKS, and she was calling me an “innovator”.
I don’t know if I’m an innovator, but I’m definitely a weird and wrong geek and I think Ruth might just have a lovely hint of similar wrongness about her, because here are her gumpaste baby heads, one of them on a stick (oh fine, the stick is for mounting on a figure, but come on it’s still wrong-looking and funny) with the gummy baby heads:
Baby faces of wrongness.
I suggested to Ruth’s assistant Ashlee Trotter – another fabulous artist who also did a demonstration that day – that they use edible ink to black out the eyes and then take photos of them back-lit. I don’t know if they did or not; that may have crossed a wrongness level for such nice folks!
