Finger Lickin’ Landscapes: Edible Environments by Carl Warner

As a kid, I was a notorious food arranger. I didn’t play with my food, and always maintained proper table manners, but was just generally careful about where food sat on my plate. My peas or green beans always ended up in some sort of geometric relationship (which may have been a prolonging of the inevitable…we were big on canned veggies growing up; I thusly didn’t realize I liked green vegetables ’til high school, and I had some that were…actually green, not olive drab), and I was always careful about how my bites were arranged: square cuts, equal spacing, centered on fork. I grew up to be a spatially-oriented right brained perfectionist…big surprise, right?

   Thusly, I have a huge soft spot for Carl Warner’s Food Landscapes. “Meat mountains, broccoli trees, cabbage seas, chocolate rivers and cereal leaves are just some of the fun elements in the dioramas. Made with most things edible, the landscapes and buildings have obvious commercial applications, but some are just as appetizing to gaze upon.”

Because the food wilts under the necessary lighting, the elements must be photographed in layers, and then assembled in post-production, but the actual materials are all physical – no computers involved.

He says, “ I tend to draw a very conventional landscape using classic compositional techniques as I need to fool the viewer into thinking it is a real scene at first glance, it is the realisation that the scene is in fact made of food that brings a smile that brings a smile to the viewer, and for me that’s the best part.”

Read more about Carl’s technique, see lots of images, and learn about his new book and calendar at If It’s Hip, It’s Here.