Man redoes his hotel room with melted cheese.

[Hardbopjazz]

Strange News - AP

Brooklyn Cheese Artist Makes Bed of Ham

Thu Jun 3, 6:19 PM ET Add Strange News - AP to My Yahoo!

By DESMOND BUTLER, Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK - An artist best known for decorative cheese has broadened his palette, or palate, to ham. Brooklyn-based Cosimo Cavallaro, who once repainted a New York hotel room in melted mozzarella, has begun covering a bed in Hormel. "I feel like I am back in my mother's deli," the artist said Thursday.

Cavallaro's installation in a street-level gallery space of the Roger Smith Hotel in midtown Manhattan involves slicing 312 pounds of ham and laying it down in an elegant four-poster bed.

The installation, which took 3 1/2 hours, will be kept in the air-conditioned room for two days.

According to the artist, no concern about cockroaches has been raised. "They are welcome," he said. "Imagine what this looks like from the point of view of an insect."

He added that his cheese exhibits had never attracted a mouse. "Too much cheese," he said. "It would have overwhelmed them."

At noon, Cavallaro, a burly man with long unkempt hair and a beard who doubles as an award-winning filmmaker, was busy working a chrome meat slicer like one he had used working in his mother's delicatessen during childhood summers. "I was a good slicer back then," he said looking straight ahead as he flipped a handful of sliced ham behind him onto a growing mound rising from the white sheets.

Outside, pedestrians stopping to peer in through the glass on 47th Street were skeptical.

"That's a waste of food, with all of the hungry people in America," said Alithea Henriquez.

But nearby, delis were said to be picking up business. "It does make me hungry," said Keuan Mcneal.

Cavallaro, 41, the son of immigrants from southern Italy, grew up in a hardscrabble section of Montreal.

He asked his mother, who still lives in Montreal, not to come to the installation. "She would want to get in on the act," he said.

But his father, a metal worker who died two years ago, was less amused by his work, his girlfriend said.

"His father never let him play," said longtime girlfriend Sarah Jacobs. "That's why he started with the cheese. He's an ironist."

Sliced ham, Cavallaro said, is "a pure form of America: all kinds of parts, boiled and pressed together."

Despite his training in an Italian art school, Cavallaro said he had rejected Prosciutto. "It would have been pompous," he said.

He also shelved an idea to do ham and eggs as "too pretentious, too thought out."

But he said he thinks he will always come back to food as a medium. "The smells bring you back to unexpected places," he said. "It's very special."

Gallery director Matthew Semler said he booked the exhibit for the fun of it. "This isn't work, it's play. That's was Cos does," he said, referring to the artist.

Cavallaro says his cheese period ended two years, after he had coated a vacant house in Powell, Wyo., with 5 tons of pepper jack.

"I was cloaking myself in cheese. I had started getting comfortable," he explained. "I always need new boundaries."

Edited June 4, 2004 by Hardbopjazz

[JSngry]

Oh, it's art ok.

But it's also silly as hell.

[Hardbopjazz]

Feel sorry the the cleaning crew at the hotel.

[brownie]

Does the 'artist' recommend any wine to go with his bed?

[robviti]

behold, the power of cheesus!

[Claude]

It reminds me of a Monty Python (?) scene in a restaurant, where an extremely fat customer digests his meal, suddenly inflates to balloon size and finally explodes.

Edited June 4, 2004 by Claude

[7/4]

It reminds me of a Monty Phyton (?) scene in a restaurant, where an extremely fat customer digests his meal, suddenly inflates and finally explodes.

Yes, it was Monty Python. The Meaning of Life.

[Free For All]

It reminds me of a Monty Phyton (?) scene in a restaurant, where an extremely fat customer digests his meal, suddenly inflates and finally explodes.

Yes, it was Monty Python. The Meaning of Life.

"Better get me a bucket...."

"It's wafer-thin........."

[PHILLYQ]

After the cheese thing and the ham thing, is bread next for a sandwich thing?

I wouldn't go to his house for ham and eggs, pizza, etc.

[chris olivarez]

Not art.Just gross.