Edible Art: Shelly Miller

A few months ago, I shared with you some tile cookies from Whipped Bake Shop. This week’s post, about Montreal artist Shelly Miller, takes the whole of idea of edible tiles one step further by placing the tiles on actual buildings. Using cake icing, Miller created replicas of Portuguese-inspired ceramic tiles on the sides of abandoned buildings in Brazil. According to Miller, “This piece acts as a metaphor for the economic imbalance in many of the sugar producing countries, such as Brazil and the sugar industry as a whole. Beneath the surface of the sugar industry empire lies the reality of its slave labor foundation.”

But Miller doesn’t stop at tiles. As with her work in Brazil, she is always influenced by her surroundings and her wall art takes on various forms, depending on the location of the piece. In urban landscapes, her sugar technique may pop up in the form of graffiti art, elsewhere it appears as an incredibly detailed decorative mural. No matter what the design, all of these pieces share one common element. Much like their real life counterparts, they will all disappear eventually, slowly dissolving over time.

Day One

Day Six

You can see more of Shelly Miller's amazing work after the jump.