ASU Herberger College School of Art Faculty:
2006-2007 Exhibition

April 14 through September 9, 2007

BETSY SCHNEIDER

Betsy Schneider
Worlds Biggest Bubblegum Jawbreaker (after 5 days), 2006
Archival ink-jet print rear-mounted on Plexiglas
42 x 36"
Courtesy of the artist

Betsy Schneider

All For Your Delight is a catalog of hundreds of different kinds of candy.

When I was eight, I got 25 cents for my weekly allowance. Every week, I would ride my bike to the local 7-11, a few blocks from my house, and spend half the morning perusing the aisles of candy, deciding how best to spend the money. I used to take so long and so seriously, that one day a mother in the store called her child, telling her to get away from me, that people would think she was "retarded, like that girl over there". Thirty years later, people in candy stores again look at me like I am a bit soft in the head: while I'm searching for candy I have not yet photographed, my children are begging to leave the store.

I don't think that anything has the ability to evoke nostalgia the way candy does. The bright colors and sweetness are designed to appeal to children and somehow it retains the ability to reach as far back as most of our memories. With this obsessive work, I ask myself why I have such an intense attraction to candy, even that which may be unhealthy or even repellant (surely those colors are not good for me?). These pictures are made with a hedonistic desire, and I find that both making them and looking at them is fun. Sweets, however, are far more than that. A quick look at the history of sugar production, the current epidemic in childhood obesity and the insidious industry of marketing to children reveal that, candy too, has a dark side. But, it's fun to look at and often quite good to eat.

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