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Butter sculpture of of a dragon. We call her Margereene.

​The Missouri State Fair's kicks off this Thursday in Sedalia. Where there's a fair, there's one thing for certain:

Butter sculptures.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Iowa State Fair's annual butter sculptures, and the first fair since its longtime artist, Norma "Duffy" Lyon, passed away at age 81 in June.

The tradition's newer at the Missouri State Fair. Siblings Janice Hargrave and Scott Linsenbardt are currently working on their second butter sculpture for the fair, a cow posed as Rodin's The Thinker. It's made mostly from butter recycled from last year's cow butter sculpture.

Although their butter art looks perfectly fine, we think cows are a bit overdone. Check out these less expected butter sculptures.

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I've grown weary of all the "outrageous" bacon Internet stuff, but this one was too good to pass up. And it's the end of the week, so you likely need a laugh to tide you over to the weekend. So I present to you Van Gogh's "Starry Night" made out of bacon:

Screenshot: www.instructables.com

​This is from a website called Instructables. I think this is the original post that has gone viral over the past couple of days, but I'm not 100% sure. My apologies if I'm not giving the proper site credit.

Deborah Hyland

what could possibly go better with an exhibition of Mayan art and artifacts than Mayan-inspired chocolates by Kakao? How 'bout Kakao's Mayan-inspired chocolates paired with beer from Maplewood neighbor Schlafly?

​To celebrate its exhibition, Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea, the Saint Louis Art Museum (in Forest Park; 314-721-0072) could have gone in any number of directions.

One direction that was not explored: taking inspiration from one of the objects on display, an eighth-century vomit spoon carved from manatee bone.

Regurgitation aside, Mayan iconography is loaded with food imagery: ducks, corn, alligator. Seafood too: conch and frogs, lobster, shrimp and turtle. One well-to-do Mayan was so fond of his victuals that he had a special platter made for one particular delicacy -- a fact researchers divined by translating the inscription on the plate, which reads: "His plate, his eating-instrument for white venison tamales."

The Mayans were also chocolate lovers. Matthew Robb, the art museum's assistant curator for ancient American and Native American art, notes that there were vessels designed for the express purpose of drinking chocolate beverages. "The Maya word for chocolate was kakaw," Robb tells Gut Check. "On these vessels the syllable ka- is often represented with a fish head accompanied by a sign for the number two. So: ka times two, plus the syllable for wa -- in Maya writing you drop the final vowel -- equals kakaw."

Chocolate and fish? Gut Check once vowed never to return to a restaurant that drizzled chocolate sauce over shrimp. Fortunately, SLAM took a more palatable approach, partnering with locally based producers Kakao Chocolate and Schlafly Beer to develop Beer + Chocolate = Food of the Gods. The event, held at the museum Thursday, March 31, from 6:30 until 9 p.m., features six beer-and-chocolate pairings, along with live music, hors d'oeuvres and tours of the exhibition.

Pairing beer and chocolate made sense to the Mayans. They never played beer pong or debated the place of a lemon wedge in the hefeweizen, but they were all over fermented-corn beverages, and those Mayan drinking vessels would do a frat boy proud -- they hold a quart at the very least. The chocolate apparatus, meanwhile, featured a spout to aerate the frothy hot liquid. Doubtless some anthropologist somewhere has written a thesis on how Mayan methods of chocolate consumption evolved into generations of modern-day children blowing bubbles in chocolate milk.

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In 2007 Jane Linders, an artist specializing in alternative-process photography, took her Polaroid to the corner of Chouteau and 7th to nab a piece of St. Louis' Route 66 history. She captured the original Eat-Rite Diner, still serving slingers and bags of burgers for over 60 years, in a gritty, ominous photo that could have been taken decades earlier.

For the second time, the Smithsonian will be utilizing Linders' work on Smithsonian Spotlight: Picture Perfect on the Smithsonian Channel on March 6 at 10 a.m. and March 8 at 8 p.m. The program is a behind the scenes look at the Smithsonian's annual "Picture Perfect" contest and the photos that have been a part of it.

Linders talked to Gut Check about her iconic photo, restaurant photographs, and how to make your own haunting old diner photos.

Jane Linders

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Earlier today, I went searching for a photograph of a toilet to illustrate a post about restaurant toilets being cleaner than restaurant high chairs. I found a perfectly adequate photo of a toilet.

I also stumbled upon these illustrations, apparently from Holland, of constipated women. What more can I say except "Enjoy!"

Image via

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It's unclear if this is woman is actually constipated, or if her butt is stuck inside her chamberpot.

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Last week Regretsy, the website that culls online mega craft show Etsy for the worst handmade goods -- "Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet." -- featured an art photo they dubbed "Shit Sandwich."

The artist, unimpressed with a sandwich she'd ordered, reconstructed her leftovers, took a photo that would be sub-par by Urbanspoon standards, tacked on a loquacious description and is trying to sell it.

regretsy.com

​ Which led us to wonder: What are other crafters doing with food that they probably shouldn't? Lots of things. Lots of really odd things.

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On June 5, Grand Center neighbors the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts and Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis join forces to present Art/Food, an event designed to bring together the two different mediums -- and the two different institutions -- for an afternoon.

Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY

Gordon Matta-Clark, Bingo, 1974. Three building fragments: painted wood, metal, plaster and glass.

​The special event marks a rare collaboration of the two institutions, according to Pulitzer spokeswoman Rachel Craft. "We have a collaborative blog that we've done for five years now," says Craft. "It's called Two Buildings, One Blog. But I think this is one of the first full-on collaborations that we've done on one event."

Art/Food closes the Pulitzer's exhibition Urban Alchemy: Gordon Matta-Clark, which has incorporated community-based art projects and a series of panel discussions. (The last discussion of the series, "Food, Art, and Community" can be streamed at the Pulitzer's website.) In keeping with Matta-Clark's work, Art/Food will re-create a pig roast the late artist staged beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. The event will also resurrect Matta-Clark's restaurant venture Food, where people could eat food produced by artists.

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It's a holiday of sorts for the world's stoner subculture, and if you'd like to celebrate with a cannabis-infused culinary endeavor, well, look no further.

This recipe for "Haschich Fudge" was handed out on little scrolls of parchment Friday night at the wild opening for the art exhibit "Alice" at the Koken Art Factory. The show features works from more than 50 local and regional artists, all inspired by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
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Art may feed the soul, but someone's got to feed the people who make it.

Less than a year after opening, Stirrup Pants Chapbook Store (2122 Cherokee Street) decided to host Sloup, described by store owner Maggie Ginestra as a way "to facilitate community-funded art projects in greater St. Louis, via soup." Sloup will be held one Sunday each month from 6 till 8 p.m.

Ginestra and Sloup partner Amelia Colette Jones were inspired to create Sloup after learning of similar programs in Illinois (Incubate in Chicago) and New York (Feast in Brooklyn). One night each month, artists present grant proposals to patrons who pay $10 for the privilege of reviewing the ideas over soup and homemade bread. At the end of the evening, one project is awarded all the money raised by that night's dinner.

The first Sloup, which took place February 21, awarded funds to Urban Studio Cafe to purchase screen-printing equipment.

"It exceeded our expectations. Everyone who attended brought awesome energy to the dinner," Ginestra says.

Why soup?

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Image source

Irwin and some of his (non-microwaved) art.

​Lucia Pamela, the musician and space traveler who is the star of this week's feature, was not the only artistically gifted member of her family. Her mother, Lucia Beck, was a concert pianist. Her daughter, Georgia Frontiere, was a nightclub singer. And her grandson, Kenny Irwin, who also goes by the name Hassan, is a pioneer in the burgeoning field of microwave art.

"I was actually the first to come up with the concept of microwaving for entertainment on the Internet," he says modestly.

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