Getting Away with It: An Artist's Blog about Art: Modern Food Fight: What playing with your food can do.

It’s Giuseppe Arcimboldo gone 3D! As a team, Saxton Freymann and Joost Elffers have created and published eight children’s books about food play. Their creative art stems- no pun intended- from Saxton’s eight birthday where he received his first pocket knife. He promptly used it to carve a pumpkin and this, he states, is what drew him toward the art of carving food.

Joost Elffers, of Dutch decent, lives in America and began writing books in the early 1970’s. He met Saxton and they began creating books with Saxton and the “illustrator” and Joost as the author. Joost mentioned once that he never understood why Americans carved the stem out of the pumpkin when it already made such a cute nose.

(Dr. Pompo's Nose, 2000) Perhaps this is what Joost meant by a "cute" nose?

Before meeting Saxton, Joost co-authored many books such as Origami, Cat’s Cradle, and Anamorphoses- all with very creative and interactive subject matter. Saxton’s wife, Mia, helped jumpstart his career by founding the eeBoo Company. Together, she and Saxton created products that could be both entertaining and educational. Some of these products include growth charts, cookie cutters, and stacking blocks, all of which fueled the fire for Saxton’s vegetable carving.

Later on, the two men joined together as friends and co-workers and produced a plethora of children’s books featuring carved veggies and fruits in playful situations. Some of their most famous books include How Are You Peeling?: Foods with Moods, Food for Thought, and Fun with Food.