You’re in first grade. You just finished your first spelling test and you started learning about multiplication. They have pizza for lunch today; and you’re headed there right now! The lunch lady places pizza, corn, and the fries that look like smiley faces into the separated sections of the red tray, and you get to choose what milk you want. You go sit with your friends and you laugh and talk while devouring greasy pizza and flavorless corn, and for the next thirty minutes no one thinks about multiplication or how they did on their spelling test.

There is a very peculiar brand of nostalgia that I feel when thinking of public-school lunches that differs greatly from the home cooked meals that I experienced while growing up. The mass-production of school lunch foods is something that a great majority of us have experienced together as children. A lot of people grew up eating the same regulated food and even though we may look upon them with something akin to disgust, we all loved the lunches to some extent or another. There is a sense of familiarity with these institutionalized meals that people connect to whether it be nostalgic longing or revulsion.

Millions of people are familiar with the look, smell, and taste of popcorn chicken, crinkle cut fries, and fruit cocktail. They are familiar with the excitement that always came when the teacher announced that it was time for lunch. There is something iconic about the imagery of the classic American school lunch. We not only experienced it firsthand, but we saw the red tray and her contents in movies, tv shows, and commercials. It has become an engrained part of our childhood in American culture. We connect to memories of these meals not only in a tactical way, but we also associate many of these memories to media; thus, making the shiny tray and what it holds an iconic American image.

 I have become obsessed with school lunches. The simplistic and organizational layout of the lunch tray and how each element is only part of a whole but is none the less just as intriguing as the next. The mass production allows for categories and subsections to be created. Different versions of the same exact meal begin to exist, and I am fascinated with the ability of American school lunches to be diverse even though it is not at all. The compartments of the tray and the sustenance that goes there are like Legos; there is only one type of piece that will fit into each spot, but you can maybe switch up the color occasionally.

I have been utilizing lithography, monoprint, woodblock and sublimation processes to celebrate these foods and to explore the color and textures that are associated with these lunches. I used more hands-on processes such as lithography and monoprinting to really explore the textures I could get through printmaking. Drawing with the grease crayon and playing with ink application brought me to a place of experimentation that brings a childlike feel to some of my works. Utilizing processes such as laser woodblocks and sublimation helps me to create works that have more repetition and uniformity. The use of texture, color, and repetition in my work was important because it allows for the subject matter to be bright and unique on its own but at the same time it is only one element part of a whole.