Jelly Babies

Photo by Brian Valentine

As far as sweets/desserts are concerned, I’m not a fan of jellied things. I never liked Jell-o, not even as a kid. Nor did I like jellied candy, like worms or bears. I don’t even really like jelly beans, although I do quite enjoy Jelly Bellies. Don’t ask me to explain the difference. Needless to say, I don’t really enjoy eating gelatin-spiked foods, but I do seem to be fascinated by them. Jelly keeps popping up on this site over and over and over again. As an object of interest, I can’t seem to resist a wobbly thing! I think some of it comes from the fact that jellied foods often take on the oddest and most bizarre shapes, like these Jelly Babies, for instance. There is something so wrong about them, yet I can’t look away! For starters, who wants to eat a tiny person? Not to mention the fact that there’s something almost alien-like and scary about their design. I can almost imagine them coming to life and forming a small army of jelly people, which will then take over the planet, filling it with tiny jelly houses, tiny jelly trees, and tiny jellied jelly donuts. I’m just saying. It could happen.

Image by Paul Frank

Jelly babies have been around, in some form or another, since 1918. But artist Mauro Perucchetti was the first person to turn them into art. The sculptures, which are made out of  polyurethane resin, have been featured in several of his exhibitions and were most recently installed at Marble Arch in London's West End.

From the artist: “Twelve years ago I created a body of work inspired by the dilemma between cloning and religion, and cloning and medical ethics. I decided to use the jelly baby as an impersonation of cloned mankind. I was trying to capture the ambiguity that could be present in a cloned being. On first glance, they seem very sweet, but from certain angles, they can look slightly sinister, especially on a large scale."

My thoughts exactly. Like I said, watch your back. To learn more about the history of Jelly Babies, click here. You can also find more information on Mauro's work via the Halcyon Gallery right here, as well as on his personal website, here.