This is Liz. She's an artist who works in a very delicious medium; Jell-O.

In this particular clip, she shows how she fashions San Francisco's entire Mission District out of the gelatin dessert.

The process is simple, but tedious: Liz takes pictures of the District, and then uses the photos to build molds out of balsa wood and foam core. Then, she builds silicone rubber molds around the sculptures, and when they dry, she makes the Jell-O and lets it set in the molds.

(Oh, and Liz makes Jell-O the way us normal people do, but sometimes she adds additional coloring to make the sculpture more vibrant). She also sprinkles dry Jell-O around the model to represent streets and parks).

One caveat about working with Jell-O (besides the overwhelming urge to consume your sculptures, of course) has to be the fact that eventually, it gets moldy.

But instead of letting that ruin her work, Liz uses the moldiness as a metaphor for change and adaptation within urban areas.

Here at Slashfood, we tend to post a lot about food art. Like, a lot.

So, obviously, I didn't hesitate when I found these crazy creations. Made primarily out of produce and baguettes, these ain't your grandmomma's food sculptures.

The images have that creative, slightly eerie feeling of those in Joost Elffers' books, like Food for Thought.

For more, go here.

The CurdNerds unearthed this ridiculous video of Professional Cheese Carver Troy Landwehr fashioning an enormous block of orange cheddar cheese into - what else? - the Statue of Liberty.

The video is sped-up and set to music, and is as much a music video for the background band and an ode to oily, bland cheese as it is a promo for Showtime's State of the Union TV show.

In a world of the Wing Bowl and extreme cake decorating, the only obvious next activity to gain status was cheese carving. There are a few nail-biting moments there toward the end, when a crack in the statue's oily, curdy base threatens to topple her. But - spoiler alert! - Landwehr prevails, and to my relief, the statue is completed, carved cheesy torch and all. Although, at times during the video, if you squint, the sculpture bares a strange resemblance to Bart Simpson.

You remember: she's the chewing gum fanatic in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who broke a world record by chewing one stick of gum for three months straight. And we're guaranteed that Maurizio Savini would be her hero.

Savini's chewing gum sculptures have getting a ton of press lately, probably less for artistic merit and more for pure gawking value. For the record, all of the gum he uses is un-chewed, and according to a bio on nonprofit art foundation Pastificio Cerere's site, Savini chose gum as a medium for its barrage on our senses and because it reminds him of childhood.

Check out more of his sculptures here, and then give us your opinion.

Candy Addict recently did a review of several graphic artists that paint and sculpt with chewing gum. I think my favorite of the three they list is a series called Gum Blondes by artist Jason Kronenwald. His Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe are great. Candy Addict also mentions GumArt, a collection three-dimensional works from veteran gum artist Jamie Marraccini. These sort of recall the stop-motion animation of early Peter Gabriel videos. Finally, there's Ben Harben, whose Bubblegum Society art (above) imitates the bubblegum life of reality television with portraits of stars from shows like American Idol and Survivor. Candy Addict also has info on "Chew by Numbers" kits.

Artist Prudence Emma Staite is a lot like Willy Wonka in that she makes an astounding variety of things from chocolate. Her website, Food is Art, shows just how dedicated she is to remaking ordinary objects into edible art. Using fine Belgian chocolate, she makes everything from chocolate sculptures, like the chocolate kitchen set pictured here, to chocolate board games. The giant chocolate Jenga puzzle is made of more than 130 pounds of chocolate! She also has miniature chocolate games, paintings and does custom works. Her most Wonka-like creation is the edible chocolate room. The room contains pieces made entirely of chocolate, including a fireplace with mantle and chandelier, and even the walls are made of lickable chocolate with lickable sugar wall paper.

 

We've seen strangely shaped watermelons and monster watermelons, but we have yet to see watermelon carving of the magnitude found in this online gallery. The horse and cyclist, shown above, are two of my favorites, though the skiier and Taj Mahal are very impressive. Watermelons are natural canvases for food art due to their large size and thick but easily carved rind. The fact that they are colorful is an added bonus. With a sharp knife and a steady hand, it does not seem like it would be that difficult to carve a basic pattern into a watermelon - after all, thousands of children carve into pumpkins every year, and watermelon carving does not require you to gut the fruit before starting.

Somehow, we missed the 176-pound solid chocolate Brad Pitt that was put on display in a department store in South Korea over Valentine's Day. According to Best Week Ever, the near life-size model was a response to the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il's commission of a 200-pound model of Leslie Nielsen made out of olives. The likeness of Brad does not look exactly like him, but there is a resemblance and no doubt the effort was greatly appreciated by fans of the actor. Brad Pitt sounds a lot more appetizing, generally speaking, but it seems safe to say that chocolate will win over more people than a 200-pound pile of olives.

No word on what was done with the chocolate when the display was taken down. It didn't turn up on eBay, so it is safe to assume that it was either eaten or melted down and recast.

Back in October, I posted about sculptures of Darth Vader and Yoda made from roughly half a ton of butter. Today, boingboing featured a post about food sculptor Jim Victor. I don't believe that Victor is the one responsible for the Star Wars butter sculptures, but his portfolio of sculptures made from butter, as well as cheese, chocolate and pasta, is pretty impressive.

MetaFilter also has several links to other butter sculpture sites, including some great photos of butter sculptures done by Tibetan monks (right). Butter, a noble medium indeed.

While many will discard the peel when they eat an orange, others will save the zest for later use. There are a few who will turn it into a work of art. Jeu d'oranges is a site that hosts a monthly orange peel sculpting contest. The name of the site means Orange Game, or Game of Oranges. To enter your creation, you must carve it out of one whole piece of peel and photograph it on a black background, without letting it harden and dry. Every 15 days, the peel with the greatest number of votes will be posted on the homepage. The site is in French, but you don't need to be fluent to view their amazing orange peel galleries. Another way to make viewing the site easier is to use Google's translation feature to view the page.

Thanks to Bibi for the tip!

Does anyone else find this more than a little creepy?

Sharon Baker - and note her name - has baked a life-size replica of her naked body and will watch the audience eat it.

It is made from bread dough so not really cannibalistic; but close. The 5ft 3in bread body is on show in London's Docklands and was created inside a plaster cast of the artists body.

I also find it odd in the same way as that German man who watch his killer eating his body parts before dying; admittedly it is not quite the same but creepy none the less.