Brooklyn Cheese Artist Makes Bed of Ham
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 4, 2004

Filed at 8:32 a.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- An artist best known for decorative cheese has broadened
his palette, or palate, to ham. Cosimo Cavallaro, who once repainted a New
York hotel room in melted mozzarella, has covered a bed in processed ham.
``I feel like I am back in my mother's deli,'' the artist said Thursday.

His installation in a street-level gallery space of the Roger Smith Hotel in
midtown Manhattan involved slicing 312 pounds of ham and tossing the meat on
top of a 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, was busy
working a chrome meat slicer, similar to one he had used as a youth, working
summers in his mother's delicatessen. ``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 stopped to peer in through the glass. Some called the
project a waste of food. But nearby delis were said to be picking up
business because the mounds of meat seemed to trigger appetites.

Cavallaro, 41, the son of immigrants from southern Italy, grew up in
Montreal and now lives in Brooklyn.

He asked his mother, who still lives in Montreal, not to attend 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 father never let him play,'' said longtime girlfriend Sarah Jacobs.
``That's why he started with the cheese.''

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, he said he had rejected
Prosciutto -- ``It would have been pompous.'' He also shelved an idea to do
ham and eggs as ``too pretentious, too thought out.''

But 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 what Cos does,'' he said, referring
to the artist.

Cavallaro says his cheese period ended two years ago, after he had sprayed
five tons of pepper jack over a vacant house in Powell, Wyo.

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

Tonight when we left the pink I hitched a ride with stickboy who was parked just a few yards away. When we got into the car we were cornered off by multiple police. The fuzz were hassling a guy sitting on the steps of what looked like an apartment building. This was going on right across from my passenger side window as I gazed at the spectacle I realized that the passed out guy they were hassling was chief, the same guy I met today while doing my plant watering rounds. The cops were actually fairly kind to him and just made him get up and walk on. While this was happening Keith walked by with the hippie folk he was writing of. It's a small world.

When I was on my plant watering rounds I came across a young chap who introduced himself as chief and he walked with me spouting crazy talk for 7 blocks or so. He invited me to someplace to play Go Fish with him. Crazy but nice.
After the watering I went over to a small garden around bidwell and elmwood. I pulled up a shit load of weeds so y'all should go over and walk through that tiny ass garden and try to appreciate the slightly weeded walkway that goes through it.