Harrell Fletcher: Born out of Pleasure

A ten-day project and six-week exhibition, with an accompanying event series involving a visiting artist and various local people, translated into cake form, with photographs, text descriptions and a blog (cakeworthy.blogspot.com).

Harrell Fletcher invited six Toronto-based artists, who in turn invited six people who don't identify as artists, to devise an exhibition from scratch together. Alongside the six artists the group included a lawyer, a mathematician, a baker, a computer engineer, a puppeteer and clown, and an economist and former Angolan freedom fighter.

Creative decisions were reached through a process of discussion, but not always consensus, with group members' skills and experiences informing the project's direction. For instance, Karen Wielonda's expertise as a baker stimulated the use of cakes as a sculptural element and commemorative device, while a lemon-shaped cake is derived from mathematician Kristin Shaw's lecture about geometry and infinity. An accompanying lecture series presents individuals that the group encountered speaking on a range of subjects – from surviving traffic accidents to studying medical herbalism.

For Fletcher, a self-described "shy person," this way of working diverts attention away from him as the artist and towards other people whose experiences and accomplishments are generally not celebrated in public.

Treading a fine line between amateurism and professionalism, sentimentality and seriousness, the project valued the activities of people from all walks of life and evoked a sense of collective learning and knowledge. The alternative title proposed by the participants "it was bound to lead to disappointment" pointed to the perhaps inevitable tensions and agonisms within a group project of this nature.