• Partnered

    Porcelain, Glaze, Gold Luster, Conductive Paint, Cake, Icing, White Chocolate, Battery-Powered Mechanisms, Vitrines, 24" x 12" x 11", 2013 

    Partnered (Mechanisms of A Measured Demise) unites the mechanical, the edible, and the utilitarian. Two 6-inch vitrines sit on a wall-mounted shelf. Cube One displays an elaborate miniature cake atop a porcelain cake-stand which lazily rotates by hidden motor. A mechanized porcelain blade gradually gouges and excavates the revolving cake; a lovely mass of icing and crumbs litters the cube’s interior. The measured demise of the petite dessert is at once torturous, indulgent, and poetic. Within Cube Two, a small porcelain platter adorned with painted circuitry holds a white chocolate anchor. The electrically-powered circuit generates heat within the porcelain. The slow-melting anchor gradually floods the cube with its sweet viscosity; the circuitry becomes concealed, the foundation engulfed.  The porcelain platter - a utilitarian instrument of display - becomes destructive and, ultimately, consumed.

  • Weight/Loss

    Porcelain, Wood Veneer, Flocking, Gemstones, Sugar-Encrusted Braided Rope, Crystallized Sugar and Plaster, 1' x 1' x 8', 2012.
    In this exploration of weight and balance, an adorned porcelain pulley bears the load of a grotesquely-encrusted geode. The hook and rope become coated with a stained glisten as the sugar crystals grow upward, slowly making their way toward machine.

  • Pale Pulley with Sugar-Coated Weights

    Porcelain, Plastics, Crystallized Sugar on Weights and Twine, 3' x 2', 2012
    Porcelain weights, encrusted with sugar, suspend from a perforated pulley. The sugar continually grows on the porous materials, slowly generating a shift in weight and balance.

  • Bricks + Honey

    Glacé Icing on Wood Panel and Wall, 9' x 6', 2012
    This work came from a desire to explore symbols of structure, privacy, and protection, while using the temperamental material of sugar. The process of painting the imagery - layering on goopy tinted icing - also became a method of construction.

  • Gut Fauna

    Buttercream Icing and Vinyl, 6' x 5', 2012
     A visual representation of gastric bacterium whose delicate balance is so easily disrupted by the addition of ingested sugar.  The artificiality of the exploited materials - plastics and processed sugars - contrasts the organic. A multi-phased process of  creating floral lace - initially made dimensional with porcelain, then digitally flattened into a simplistic silhouette - further represents the replacement of the natural with the synthetic.  

  • Brain

    Red Velvet Cake, Buttercream Icing, Porcelain, White Chocolate, 2012
    Red Velvet cake, poised on a porcelain cake stand with white chocolate drips, is housed inside a piped buttercream silhouette . This piece displays excavation and alteration through the innate oral processes of licking and biting.

  • Confected Character

    Etched Glass, Vanilla Cake, Dark Chocolate Ganache, Fresh Raspberry Compote, Buttercream Icing, One Hundred Forks, 14' x 1' x 4', 2011.
    A thin glass shelf displays the orderly collection of one hundred forks, each bearing a seductive mouthful of dessert; every crumb and bite is reflected in the luster. Illustrating a timeline of arduous weight loss, ovular plot points -stretched and bloated- are etched into the surface of the glass. Fingerprints and sticky smudges on the utensils implicate an addict; the engraving below delivers a rhythmic diagram of slow progress and swift relapse.

  • Translucent Porcelain Installations

    Translucent Porcelain, Underglaze, Light, Wood, Metal Rods
    Cara Long's translucent porcelain installations explore the haunting beauty of docile female figures restrained within stark, potentially perilous environments. The figures, painted directly onto thin panels of porcelain and then back-lit to give a subtle glowing effect, provoke emotions of loss and defeat. Her combination of dangling, submissive characters overlaid on a delicately illuminated surface creates a vexingly inviting experience. The precision of technique with its aesthetically immaculate glow allures even the most tepid into Long’s emotionally disparate imagery. The marriage of such striking visuals and seductive translucency prevails in this intimate series of installations.