Every Day is Jell-O Art Day Now

 I wish I were being more productive toward this year's show because my anxiety is mounting and work is the antidote to that...but yesterday I sat in the sun for so many hours because it was one of my last free Saturdays before the market season starts up. And you know, that show on March 28th. The sun was way too seductive to resist.

Our script is almost in its final version, though we keep thinking of ways to make it tighter and more nuanced which we always do right up until the last minute, though we know that is a vexing habit that makes us less polished in the end. But with how fast the world has been changing, we want to stay current and we don't always know that what we are doing is not going to play well so we sometimes have to drop things that will sound insensitive. We can be that flexible but this year we are especially trying to get it together better as last year was a circus with too many clowns and we can do better. 

But as far as props go, that's a part I love so I've been literally picking off the low-hanging fruit by making a bunch of fake food for one scene. And working on the campfire. It's kind of working, though I have many more plans for it and I found some optical fibers yesterday I may try to fix up to add some interest. I'm told to keep it simple every year but that is just not how I operate, so I try, but I layer things up when no one is looking. Then I am reluctant to ask other people to handle props so I make myself in charge of way too much. But every year is an adventure. 

Jell-O Art in progress is next to impossible to photograph in any coherent way but I do like to document my progress and I think the fire is coming along pretty well. 

It's got gold in the flames so ought to look pretty good when I get it all glued up. It wasn't that hard to get it to this stage but there is a lot more to the concept I am struggling to even attempt. But I will do it!

Meanwhile the fake food is pretty fun so I'm roaring along with that, which I can do in the evenings out of scrap materials and some felt I bought because it was there. I'm sewing and glueing and plant to bag up lunches. Come and get it!

 I know these are kind of crude, and the limes look more like really bad pickles but the carrots are great! I like the pizza galettes too, and the apples or tomatoes will do the job even though it's not apparent which one they are. The baloney sandwich was the most time-consuming but I do think we will need baloney sandwiches so I'll attempt more. I don't guess I'll make potatoes for everyone...

I can't tell you how these fit into the narrative but you'll find out when you see the show. One of the most fun parts of our performances is that we start in January (December this year) and brainstorm repeatedly, just choosing songs we want to learn that are sometimes only tangentially related to where we think we're going, and over the ensuing months we somehow make it into a molded salad that works. We have some uncanny way of channeling the zeitgeist in good years though we have to resist a lot. But articles keep appearing in the newspaper that just feed right into what we're doing. IYKYK. Sorry I can't say more.

We're not going to use the Kristi Noem is a bird-legged ho chant, not because she should be let of the hook, but because it is sexist and body-shaming and just a bit too overt. And we don't want her in our show. We put those demons in our show last year and it was fun, but we're over it. Although it will be No Kings Day, so we hope we get some political art. 

Working on the shirt design too. Kind of need to print those this week if I can...I can! I just have to quit sitting in the sun of an afternoon, reading novels. At least if I'm going to be outside I need to be practicing the songs.

Work in Progress

 So here are my flames, so far, and the way I am making them. I'm just pouring out five different colors (red, yellow, gold, flourescent pink, and a whiter gold) on plastic wrap on a tub lid, and drying them. They're about a foot high. I plan to glue them up vertically with some kind of wood (probably paper-covered cardboard rolls or maybe actual sticks) and add whatever smaller flames it takes to make it look realistic. Just going with a vague image I have in my mind to see what it comes out like as I go. I want it kind of life size.

As you can see I put some cutlery under the plastic to keep the two from running together, and because the lids are not flat, it moves around a lot for effects I like. I tilt it to enhance that and prevent really thick parts in the middle. I stuck one piece of already dried stuff up at the top left just to use it up. I haven't always used the plastic but I like it. The gelatin releases easily and you can flip it without tearing it up by mistake. I just cut up a plastic bag but I tried the packaged wrap too and it's doable.

 These already dried ones don't look amazing to me but the full effect of them together will probably be fine. I'm planning to fasten them at the bottom to a piece of plastic netting I already had hanging around with some turquoise gelatin already embedded in it, so it will be strong at the bottom for moving around. I may abandon that plan if it looks too weird. Will probably add some green.

I'm setting that aside for now to work on cardboard and paper props I also have in my mental gallery. I love having a visual formed for what I expect to make, a gift of my brain that pleases me. I've learned that what I end up with rarely approaches my visual idea, but that is an interesting challenge too, to see if I can figure out how to align my skills with my ideas. I well remember this  frustration from my early days as an artist, which I guess starts to kick in during childhood when we start to make ambitious art. I'm so glad I didn't give up like so many kids do, and I thank my Mom, not my art teacher, for loving what I made and saving some of it for me, as she consistently did. After I had a mean first grade teacher, I never took any classes until I was an adult, and then only a couple. No doubt I have a lot of untapped potential but that's the way our life choices work out. 

I have an autobiographical piece I did when I had a broken foot I had to elevate, something I did to keep busy, which turned out to be my favorite piece ever and something I usually bring to every show. I call it an artist's book, a genre I love and have a huge desire to explore. As you may know that is an open art form that doesn't have to be a real book, but this one does have pages and a story, so.

The story is that Jell-O made me an artist. I was working at art when I got to Eugene in my  twenties, but I had no formal training and had avoided taking classes in school and had no confidence. I just kept making things and trying to sell them at Saturday Market, plus giving them to Mom. She had a nice collection of Mother's Day cards I sent home from my travels. When I met the women who became the Radar Angels, they kindly took me in and persisted in making me feel welcome despite my resistance, and the first Jell-O Art Show in 1988 was pivotal. Showing what I made in a gallery was a big step up, and Jell-O Art had a wonderful freedom. There is no critical structure for it, no credentials, no judges, prizes, evaluation. It stands on its own and says what it wants. I remember listening to people who were looking at it as I lurked, which I still do when I can. 

This was all so affirmative I just kept at it, and my offerings at Market also expanded as I gained skill and ambition and made a life in art production. I painted a lot of signs, was fascinated by lettering and also fabric, paper, and woodworking, and just made whatever I wanted for all of these decades in a mix of stuff I could sell and stuff I made anyway if it didn't sell. It wasn't always great and there were always times I was very disappointed (some of my clients were, too.) But I'd just go on to the next thing.

With the annual Jell-O Show, I really got deeply into the exploration and joy and did a lot of writing about it too. Learned to screenprint and made a million t-shirts and paper things, but Jell-O was the only place I didn't have to answer to anyone's expectations. This freed me to actually do what real artists do and after probably at least 20 years I discovered I actually was a Real Artist. 

It took so long for a lot of reasons: shedding the idea that credentials were necessary, figuring out what made me real, allowing myself to not care about external validation. It was a very personal journey and I wrote about it a lot, so you can go back to the earlier posts if you like that sort of writing. Becoming crowned the Queen was pivotal in adding in that social piece where I had a bigger role, promoting art and artists and actively encouraging other people to free themselves. I even mentored a couple of kids and did quite a lot of volunteering in school when my son was young, probably preventing him from doing it in some ways but you never know when someone will decide to be creative. I'm sure he'll find his own areas of creation to fill in his own life. There's no shortage of ways to do it out there. 

We had an interesting discussion one night about how gaming taps into that when you get fascinated by a game that some brilliant person or team created for you to play. You're participating in an essential way with what they are making, just like the people who come to the Jell-O Art Show are an important part of what we do there. I reflect on that often when we gather to write and practice the performance part, which I only started to do in 2013 after I was made Queen.

I had always wanted to sing with the Angels but thought my stage fright would be too debilitating. I sang plenty, even as part of a garage band for a couple of years, but there was never an audience (not a sober one anyway) and I downplayed my abilities and contained my desire. I decided as Queen to try to do it, and again the Angels said the right things to support me and I found my place. I love to write so now I put together a good part of the script and help us channel all of our brainstormed ideas into a somewhat coherent narrative. It's really top tier fun to collaborate with smart and funny people and the whole process is maybe the most fun thing I do. I don't love performing, but one thing I said in passing last night was that I love to be clever in public. Everyone is so kind to me in the process, the whole audience just beams their delight up at us no matter what, and it goes by so fast at the show that I always cry at the end. The next day is always disappointing when it is over for a year and I put it all away. 

So it's a good week in my Jell-O Art world. The script is almost finished, our singing was really fun last night, and we feel like we always do...this is going to be the best show ever. It's one of our running jokes. The old shows fade from my memory fast, but the spontaneity is something to remember when I think I might be too bored with Jell-O to keep going with it.

Laughing at yourself is a good thing to learn to do in life. Kind of helps balance those moments when your friends and relatives laugh at you. I don't always remember to tell people how deeply meaningful the life of a Jell-O Artist actually is. There's a lot more to it than you might expect. Make some Jell-O tonight!  

Oh, and I meant to say, if you want to work in the jiggly realm with real Jell-O, just try the Jigglers recipe which is usually on the box. It's simply less water. With Jell-O brand, you can use hot water as they direct, because it's engineered for it with sugar and other things that need to dissolve. That firmness gives you a more sturdy result that you can cut and get out of molds easier, but also feel free to use the regular recipe for the ultimate amount of jiggle. It doesn't keep well, so your final piece might have to be kind of last minute, but you could always eat your prior experiments if you want to. It's not really food, in my opinion, but a lot of people sure love it.

Jell-O Research

Jell-O has a long and rich history, and is well over 100 years old, in the form of  a convenience food you can buy with instructions. As it is a byproduct of rendering animals, it was used for probably centuries as a luxury product or maybe even a regular item in any home that kept and used animals for food. Things like consomme, molded savory or sweet dishes, and many common foods used gelatin for its interesting properties and mostly neutral taste. Someone finally packaged it up for people who did not want to take the trouble of raising meat animals and parting them out to make other useful things and substances.

Get this book if you can find it, Jell-O: A Biography by Carolyn Wyman. It was published in 2001 and she did contact some of us to include us in her book, which is super fun and put us on the map internationally. If you are on Instagram, just look around for jellies and Jell-O and you will find tons of working artists and lots of leads to find out more. I have a few posts down in the archives about some of it, with links to the people I discovered awhile back when I had the notion to be a world-famous Jell-O Artist. If I have time later I will try to add a few to this post. You may still be able to find The Jell-O Knight on FB, or David Gibbs who is one of our most prolific and dedicated local artists. He can lead you to many others.

Due to my discomfort with social media I have lost touch for the most part with all of that, just staying in my own little realm using enough energy to get each year's show to happen and to keep my hand in, but some years I have low energy for it and this year is one. Not sure why, probably the world situation which is about as easy to navigate as a cream cheese and celery lime Jell-O salad in the middle of your plate. You know you CAN eat it, you just don't really want to.

But I copied out a few things from the book the other day. There's a lot more! 

 Things people say about Jell-O as something impossible: 

Like nailing Jell-O to the wall 

Like trying to find bones in Jell-O 

Like eating Jell-O with chopsticks 

Like lassoing Jell-O 

Nothing’s set in Jell-O 

That sounds like legal Jell-O 

Jell-O for brains 

Slogans: 

There’s always room for Jell-O (1964) 

Jell-O again (1946) 

The best of everything (1967) 

How sweet it isn’t (1968) 

Just for the fun of it...Jell-O tonight (1956) 

If it was there you’d eat it (1970) 

Somehow it’s always right (1971) 

Make someone happy. Make someone Jell-O (1972) 

Don’t say no, say Jell-O (1975) 

Jell-O is thrilling but not filling (1978) 

Make some fun (1979) 

What being a kid is all about (1987) 

You can’t be a kid without it (1988) 

Jell-O gelatin’s place is a kid’s face (1990) 

Still the coolest (1995) 

It’s alive (1995) 

Smile more (1998) 

Make some magic (2001)

In the Kitchen Today

 I know I need to write more...but it's not that easy thinking of new things to say, so I just repeat myself which isn't that fun either. But today, along with making some adjustments to what is now an actual script for the performance, and practicing some songs, I am planning to make Jell-O again! 

I had a little thing that restricted my ability to lift, but I'm figuring I can lift a half-full quart jar now, and the actual Jell-O I make is light and doesn't require a lot of hand and arm strength to manage. Also I have worked out some ways to do what I'm not quite recovered enough to do.

I'll just tell you that I'm going to work on what will be a campfire...with flames made of big pieces of Jell-O shaped like flames, that may or may not move around a bit or be illuminated from below to look like they're moving. I made a small fire in this piece a few years ago, so the plan is just make it bigger, but also transparent since it will be on the stage and can't block visibility. It is going to use up some gelatin.

I'll use my regular formula, 6 ounces of gelatin in  two cups of cold water in a quart mason jar. I mix it up thoroughly, and with cold water you don't get the lumps you would if you used hot water. It only took me about fifteen years to learn that bit, rediscovered from old Jell-O salad recipes. The gelatin has to "bloom," or absorb water, for about ten minutes and it gets solid though grainy. I melt it in the microwave for two minutes and then another minute or two, until it is liquid and clear, though it will be hot! Don't keep it in there if it starts to boil or rise up and threaten to spill out of the jar. Cleaning up molten gelatin is pretty tough. If you do spill it, let it harden a bit until you can peel it up cleanly so you don't have to scrape and throw it away. If there's a little dirt or crumbs in it, you may be able to peel that off, or just let it settle to the bottom of the jar when you remelt it.

I rarely have to throw the used stuff away...I remelt it, sometimes with a little water, sometimes just as is. If it gets moldy, you can possibly remove the mold, but generally I do throw that on the compost pile for the squirrels. It takes s few days or a week to get moldy, but rotting gelatin has a smell you don't want to become familiar with. So if you plan to keep some around a long-ish time and it isn't fully dried, keep it in the fridge and pay attention to it. When it starts to rot it gets liquid at the bottom. Fair warning.

Whatever you use to color it, put it in the molten gelatin. I usually divide the big jar into smaller pint jars, with one half-pint with a wide mouth kept partially full to use as glue, either spooned out with little spoons or poured out. I generally don't color that but if you use a lot of glue for your piece, you may want to color it to avoid it looking like glue.

So I pour my gelatin into pyrex dishes usually, for the glossy surface of glass, but for these bigger pieces I use lids of big plastic tubs, which will make it look dull on one side, but you could maybe use an old piece of window glass if you have one, or something you have around. Be careful. I have a whole set of pyrex I use only for Jell-O Art because it can dry so strong that it pulls chunks and shards right out of the pyrex, ruining it for food use and also getting a little bit dangerous for you, if you aren't careful. 

A few hours or a day after pouring these big, thin sheets, I peel them up, maybe tearing or cutting them, or twisting and shaping them according to my vision. I flip them over so they can dry on both sides, and I'll do that several times over a day or several, until they are throughly dry so I can keep making pieces until I have what I need. 

Then I will find a way to glue them together to shape my piece. Sometimes I need some kind of support for it, to drape it over a bowl turned upside down, or prop it somehow so it will dry the way I want it to. If it doesn't, I can brush it with a little water, soften it up a bit, and try to re-shape it. The "glue" can be removed or left there, melted again with hot gelatin, whatever works.

When glueing, you either have to hold the pieces together for a minimum of 90 seconds, of have them sitting in a way that will allow the glue to stay in place. You can get it kind of cool so it doesn't run all over the place, but you have a short window of time when it is the right consistency to work. If you wait too long, or move the pieces before they're stuck together, you get this chunky break-up of the gelatin which is useless for your purposes and you have to scrape that off before you try to re-glue, or you just get too much gelatin piled up and it won't dry properly.  Ideally you want everything to dry within a couple of days to avoid that mold. 

I put everything on top of furniture or on a clothes rack in my living room, which has electric heat, or if it is nice outside I sometimes put it in the sun, though you risk dust getting stuck to it, or squirrels getting interested. 

You can use a lot of different things for color. I use powdered dye, since I have a lot here that I use in my other crafts. I've used different kinds of paint, powdered metallics, and youcan sue food coloring or other things like milk, candy coloring, or whatever you have. If it's liquid, be careful not to dilute your gelatin too much with it.

It really is rather easy to do this type of gelatin, and you want some challenges to work on, so go ahead and be ambitious. I tried many things over the years with varied amounts of success, but all that is part of the fun. The best part of the dried gelatin is you can start now. No need to wait for spring break or get anxious about the deadline of the March 28th show, when you might want to go to No Kings and your Jell-O has to be finished first. Again, if you anticipate missing the drop-off time, let me know and I may be able to help. 

And feel free to make edible Jell-O if your family will eat it or you want to make Tacky Food for the Buffet.  That you will have to do carefully, in a very clean kitchen and not in advance, so no one gets sick. It doesn't really spoil unless you have some dairy product in it or something like that, but do everything you would do for a potluck with your inlaws. If you treasure your inlaws that is. 

And for those of you who celebrate tomorrow, I made this with beets, and it was delicious. Nobody would eat it though, and not because it was too pretty.

 

 

Post-Show Review I Never Got Around To in 2025

 I see that I only wrote about the sets and props and then never got around to much of anything about what happened in the gallery, or even on stage. Briefly, I played a buffoon, and my two compatriots were other iconic fools, and we got yeeted into space by the populace of the world. We tried to grift the Space Buccaneers, who had left for space years before and survived by selling Jell-O to other space dwellers.

 We villains forgot to bring any food, just brought our crypto, and as it was worthless, the buccaneers didn't accept it, but took it anyway, giving some Jell-O which got turned into magic Jell-O by a couple of sprites. In a surprise to everyone, we villains were transformed into the Golden Girls and everyone loved each other in the end. As I did say in another post, no one got their just deserts, which I found usefully punny. 

 I told the audience to let loose on the villains as it was a melodrama, but our audience is too nice, though someone did abscond with my "No Kings" crown. They booed a little. It went by fast with lots of fun and ridiculousness. We had two videos, both embarrassing as they captured our missed lines, bobbled cues, and need for more practice. Sorry we couldn't just post them. I presume the Community TV one did air. I felt somewhat responsible for not staging things better; for unknown reasons I like to place myself at the corner of the stage as if I planned to cut and run when it got too bad. It wasn't that bad.

 

 The Jell-O Art itself was not that ridiculous. there was the one attention-grabbing torso, by Dan Armstrong, who returned to Jell-O Art after several decades with this huge amount of perfectly jiggly flesh, er, gelatin. It was delightful or disgusting, depending on how tall you were perhaps. We get a lot of kids at the show who are about pedestal-height, so they sometimes miss the full effect. Edit: I know it is art, but I took out the photo of the nude torso. It's just not a good time for me, for one, to look at it. Sorry if that offends.

 

I like to take photos of the artists with their pieces as soon as they get them set up, though some people kind of sneak theirs in. I caught an Old Slug Queen coming back for a second try, this time with an elegant wall hanging. 

The Raining Slug Queen had to attend to give her Benediction, but she has come a few times, once as a substitute and now for her big moment. She has brought Jell-O Art quite a few times and hers was springy. I gave her a Jell-O Slug-on-a-Stick, which she stuck in her piece. 

 

And that is it for useable photos from last year. My own piece never got put together properly as I became enamored of a set of springform pans I got in a free pile and didn't really make the Jell-O Art that would have explained itself. I tried for a young, mature, old kind of progression but it's lost to history. My real piece that I worked on a lot was the wig, which sadly didn't fit quite as well as I planned. Gelatin tends to shrink and it did fit a one point. So it sat on my head but since my whole costume was over the top that didn't really detract.

You all have my apologies but due to a personal situation I won't be able to type for a few days or longer, so I am going to just publish this as better than nothing. I hope to do better this year. 

The show is the Jell-O Art Show, not the Radar Angel Revue or something, and though I love the performance and do my best to make it entertaining, and it did give a lot of joy, the show should be about the art and the artists who make it. I hang out all day to take photos of people as they proudly display their pieces and call themselves Real Artists, and that is what I think should get top billing. So I will work harder this year to make that happen, post-show as quickly as I can. 

Intention matters. Hope to see you there, March 28! Come between No Kings and dinner maybe. We'll have Tacky Food! (No guarantees there will be anything to actually eat, but there's usually something.)

Politics in Person

 

Ack. I just realized that we are scheduled to have the Jell-O Art Show the same day as No Kings III, which is likely to be a huge demonstration and may impact people's ability and interest in making silly art or coming to see it.

Most of our troupe are political, even radical perhaps, some of us forged in the Vietnam War protest era. Last year if you were there you saw us get pretty jiggly with it. 

We tried to keep it silly despite our passion and many of our rehearsals had interludes where we caught each other up on the latest outrages and tried to address things obliquely but honestly. 

If you read my posts you might remember one late at night where I addressed some of my despair, and it was a hard year last year. But this year, we have no idea what to do about our emotional landscape. We're immersing in singing and writing clever lines and hoping we can at least deliver some moments of laughter and joy by creating the sacred space of art.

We plan right now to keep it light and happy as a respite for people, but obviously our crowds will be smaller than usual and anyone trying to make and deliver their Jell-O will have a harder time doing so. Do let me know if I can take your piece to the gallery and I will do my best to do that. 

No Kings Jell-O Art will be appropriate and it will also be fully acceptable to distance yourself from reality for a few hours and let things go, for the collective health of our community. You can't really fight all the time. You have to have some joy in the mundane and we've done this Jell-O thing for almost 40 years. So, no, we can't cancel. We even made a zoom video in 2020 when we had to stop mid-March and drop our nearly completed rehearsals. The film we made in 2021 was at least a way to gather without getting too close to each other, and we had a kind of bubble to protect ourselves while we put it together. We thought maybe things were "back to normal" after last year. Alas, there is no normal.

I still have the gold Jell-O wig and orange tie. I took it to Market a couple of times but without the costume and context it is just uncomfortable to wear and easy to break. I will probably bring it as part of my art submissions, as I generally bring several of the old pieces to show people what can be done with the dried stuff. I hope to have the ability and time to make a piece that can easily be as inflammatory as I want it to be. 

One year I used a real AR-15 to make a mold to make a Jell-O version of it, some magazines and bullets, and I posed it in a casket being swallowed by dirt and flowers. It sat on a pedestal of legs dressed in camo and I think I had some poetry or something. Since feminism is political, nearly all of my pieces have been that on some level. I never used a Barbie without irony. 

Last year I used the t-shirt design as a platform and I will bring bandanas with that same Banksy-inspired image but without the lettering. I put it into my regular inventory of what I can protest bandanas which were nearly all images from shirts I made in the Bush era, twenty-five years ago. Remember that election when Roger Stone funded that fake protest in FL about stopping that steal, which resulted in the Supreme Court anointing Dubya instead of Gore? Fuckers. That was the summer I made this one: 

 Sometimes we concern ourselves with trying not to offend our public appreciators who do come to our shows, and we try to make things family-friendly and also respectful of our hosts at the gallery who may not share our politics. We try...but then we always have something in there that offends someone. I mean, I'm offended by jokes about body functions and not everything we say is fully informed to avoid racist, sexist or plain ignorant views. We are predominately white people in the US. Woke, but imperfect and subject to mistakes.

Like scheduling a show on a day when we all should be in the streets. Darn. It wasn't our fault. We'll see what we can do to ameliorate the harm. 

Ohhh...I just got an idea for a shirt design. We'll see. 

Trying to Be Serious About Jell-O

I finally did go through with making some Jell-O but not what I had thought I would do. I have to create some space which involves a couple of projects and maybe getting rid of some things, which I do not enjoy. I'll get there.

I did make these boingies which are fun to play with, though I don't have an immediate plan for them. I just thought if I started with something fun, it would get me going. It's like the trick of leaving some part of your work undone at the end of a session so you have a quicker start the next time. 

To make these, I use the strong gelatin recipe (3 oz per cup of water) and spread it about 1/4 inch or so thick in pyrex pie plates (after adding dye.) Then I let it sit about 6 to 12 hours, (less time is better) and use a sharp exacto knife to cut through it in a circular, spiral pattern to make a long, continuous narrow strip. I gently take it out of the pan and put it on another, or a plate, or any surface really, and twist it and turn it to have some interesting bends and shapes. Not that it will follow your directions, but you get more chances to shape it. You'll want to turn it over as it dries, or maybe drape it over something, when it gets firm enough to not break itself. 

Later, you can get a section wet if you want to bend it differently or make it do something even weirder than it chose to do on its own. You can always get this dried gelatin wet or damp and it gets flexible, so you get lots of chances to shape it the way you see it. I like to glue the end of these into a flower or in another place on a hat, and when you move, it moves, though it can be hazardous for anyone you want to hug or converse with. But it's something to try. It can be very rigid so you could make some kind of support for something, but it is hard to dry things that are thick so that can be limited. There's a lot to learn about physics, strength and gravity when you try to build things out of Jell-O. 

I remember this one piece that was a breakfast, with a suspended syrup bottle and a straw filled with "syrup" and I think you could do it without the straw, perhaps. Not to support the bottle though. I don't quite remember how they did everything in that piece. I'll go through the archives and see if I have a good photo. Food is always a good subject to render in Jell-O, particularly if you want to make some type of political statement about food. I like to use candy molds to make little shapes, which can be gummy-like or just hard and inedible, depending on your purposes. I think gummies do use gelatin, though I haven't researched that. 

 Here's the photo from 2012. It looks like the plastic straw supported the syrup bottle, emptied enough to weigh the right amount I think. Great use of props! Can't read the artist's name, and don't know if this one from 2013 is related. 

I suppose technically you could make breakfast foods that are garnished with or made from Jell-O, if you are weary of actual breakfast foods. 

And don't stop at breakfast if that is where you want to work. I made some sushi with Jell-O strips inside instead of cucumber, etc., which was actually tasty. Taste is not lacking with Jell-O, as you can make anything taste great with the right chemicals and expensive food scientists and factories. It has a great texture as well, and the brilliant transparency is a most seductive quality. That's some of the joy of Jell-O and why people keep coming back I guess.

I have a book called Jell-O a Biography by Carolyn Wyman which lists the many slogans used over the years, which are sometimes hilarious and endlessly useful when writing about and creating Jell-O. There are of course lots of old memes like the stapler from The Office and "nailing Jell-O to the wall" from corporate parlance. We need some new memes I think. The phoniness and lack of food value in Jell-O is fair game, as is the fact that it is made from hides and hooves of slaughtered cattle. One reason it is such an old food is that people liked to use everything from their livestock and it was probably easy to accidentally discover the gelatin from cooking up the waste parts. Also why it was mainly a savory food for a long time. You don't normally make desserts from animal products. But wait...dairy is an animal product. So much for that theory.

 I think I'll read back and see what still needs to be said about last year's show, since it is way too cold to go outside today. I will have to bundle up and go to practice in a couple of hours. I suppose we are lucky to not have snow. But snow and Jell-O! Wouldn't that be fun.