Potty about chocolate

Sep 27 2008 by Hannah Davies, The Journal

Chocolate is more than just a fancy for one woman, who is bringing the sensual delights of chocolate art to the region. Hannah Davies discovers more.

THERE is something so visceral about eating chocolate; it is smooth, silky, slithers across the tongue, melting deliciously in the mouth with delicious aromatic scents. There’s no doubting it is a sensual food, and it is precisely this quality, says Prudence Emma Staite, which makes it perfect for art.

Prudence, 29, is a woman who loves chocolate – nothing new in that you might say. But Prudence loves chocolate, to the point she has made it her life.

She is one of the world’s only, and quite possibly its best, chocolate artists and she’s coming to Newcastle to demonstrate her art in the Divine Creations Chocolate Sculpting Event on October 13, as part of National Chocolate Week.

The event, sponsored by Newcastle Fairtrade Partnership, Divine Chocolate and the Artworks Gallery is a celebration of all things chocolatey and plenty of audience participation is expected.

Prudence says: “I want people to eat my sculptures, that’s part of the artistic process. Then when they bite into a piece of chocolate they’ll think, ‘last time I did this I was eating part of a chocolate person,’ it keeps the art alive.”

She quotes Marcel Proust to support her thinking on chocolate art being all encompassing.

“There is something Proust said, ‘the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls... bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory,’ which I think is correct.

“Chocolate art appeals to sight, scent and taste and evokes strong memories and feelings in people.”

Prudence’s work certainly has wide-ranging appeal.

She’s produced work for TV, film, events, charity balls and had an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.

Her passion for food art though is not a new thing, it’s something she’s been working on from a young age.

Born in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, she couldn’t be kept out of the kitchen. She recalls: “I’ve been working with food since I was about two. As long as I can remember I’ve been baking.

“One of my first sculptures was a pear pigeon and it went from there.”

Hers was a family which appreciated good food, and chocolate was an important part of that.

Prudence says: “Chocolate is rooted in my childhood. It is a family, shared thing. It was something we really looked forward to and it was always shared with people as a social event. We didn’t eat it all the time, only on special occasions like Easter. We would sit around as a group of people and all share some high- quality chocolate. It was in the 1980s and you didn’t have such good quality chocolate as easily available as you do now, so my mum went to Fortnum and Mason’s to source the best stuff, and when relatives came to visit from London they would bring it as a special treat.”

At sixth form Prudence decided to take home economics, theatre studies and art A-levels.

“I knew I wanted to do something which incorporated all of them, my passion for food never left me,” she remembers, “but there didn’t seem to be anything suitable.”

Instead Prudence went to Winchester School of Art to take a fine art degree. She thoroughly enjoyed it, but it wasn’t until her final year, it finally clicked that she could join together food, art and theatricality.

“Something clicked,” she explains, “and I realised I could do my art through using food.

“I never wanted to be a chef where you create something enjoyed by one diner, I wanted to create something which could be enjoyed by many.”

In the meantime, however, Prudence had to work, and she started a job as a food stylist for a photographic studio in her home town styling food for supermarkets and their magazines.

“I was really after a job in food and I’d done work experience in the photographic studio since I was 14 so the day after I graduated I began working there.

“There is a lot of work that goes into food styling. I think people would be surprised. In a day you would do maybe six shots set around six different recipes. For a Christmas dinner, you need all the props and there are tricks of the trade to make the food look appetising.

“It’s amazing how much work it takes for a lasagne to look amazing.”

Prudence worked at the photographic studio as a freelancer until she set herself up as a chocolate artist after a grant from The Prince's Trust in 2003.

“They were really keen on what I wanted to do and they gave me the chance to launch my food art business properly.”

Until this point Prudence had been operating out of her mother’s kitchen, but thankfully – especially for her mother – the grant meant she could open up on her own.

“My offices are a huge catering kitchen,” she smiles, “it was a great relief for my mother to have her own home back.”

One of Prudence’s first commissions was a gingerbread house for a CLIC Sargent cancer charity ball.

“I always wanted to make a Hansel and Gretel house and I got the chance to with that commission. I had people like Cherie Blair and Jean Christophe Novelli eating my chocolate, that was fun to see.”

Prudence exhibited at London’s Victoria and Albert museum. “I did an exhibition with Smarties and I was asked to come up with some designs featuring great artworks.

“I thought Pointillism is similar to Smarties, so I did copies of Seurat’s work. Damien Hirst was easy to do because his spot paintings are very famous and I did Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe, it was fab.

“I also did master-classes with children showing them how to do food art!

“I want to encourage children to make art with their leftover food, you can be really, creative with food.”

There are difficulties to working with chocolate as your primary medium. “Chocolate is temperamental though,” she explains, “and one of the difficulties has been when I’ve travelled around the world creating pieces in different temperatures.

“But I use and mix chocolate like oil paints. That’s where my artistic training comes in very useful. Like any material it has its own properties and you learn how to use them for maximum effect.

“There are no books about how to be a chocolate sculptor – I’ve looked!”

Although there are people who work with chocolate, there are not many who sculpt with food that in the end you can eat, which is Prudence says “a fundamental point of my art”.

Prudence’s ambitions include making a life-size chocolate house but at her Newcastle appearance she will be creating a harvest festival themed sculpture using Divine Chocolate, which is Fairtrade.

“Chocolate week is celebrated in London, but I wanted to take it further afield which is how I’m coming to Newcastle,” she explains.

“Everything will be on a harvest festival theme, so there’ll be chocolate fruit, veg and hay.”

Tickets for the Divine Creations Chocolate Sculpting Event cost £5 and are available from Newcastle Information Centre, 8-9 Central Arcade (Windows Arcade), Newcastle City Centre, NE1 5AF.

The event is organised by Newcastle Fairtrade Partnership in partnership with Art Works Galleries www.theartworksgalleries.co.uk and Divine Chocolate www.divinechocolate.com as part of National Chocolate week.

Chocolate is rooted in my childhood. It is a family, shared thing