By Julianna Parker
In the final days of the presidential campaigns, the faces of the candidates are everywhere.
Newspaper and television are two normal mediums for these political figures, but one art student used something different.
He printed the faces of the presidential and vice presidential candidates on slices of individually packaged imitation American cheese.
The piece American Cheese -- Politics on Food is on display through election day, Nov. 4, at Forward Foods, 123 E. Main St.
University of Oklahoma photography senior Esteban Pulido decided to try printing on cheese for a class project.
"I wanted to kind of print photographs on something that was not traditional," he said. Slices of imitation cheese seemed the perfect size for a photo.
He began experimenting with chemicals in a gel to make the cheese photosensitive. It was a frustrating process, Pulido said.
"It became very kind of gooey and kind of sloppy," he said. But he pressed on.
"The first attempt, it was something like 18 or 16 hours straight in the darkroom," he said.
He was finally successful in printing black and white photos of the heads of Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain, Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin onto the cheese.
So he e-mailed Forward Foods co-owner Steve Reynolds who agreed to display the cheese on one of the grocery's shelves.
"I was so charmed by it," Reynolds said of the art. "It's a really interesting deal, and you know, it's one that makes people smile."
Most customers enjoy the presidential cheese, but Reynolds said there have been a few dissenters.
"Some people are confused because it's on one of our regular shelves," he said. "It's not in the context of an art gallery."
The cheese is refrigerated at night, but left out during the day. The plastic around the cheese is starting to curl and the cheese is starting to separate. Fortunately the art is in a glass case, because Pulido said the chemicals he used on the cheese smell awful.
But people have given Pulido positive feedback about the project, he said.
"People really enjoy being grossed out by it, I guess," he said. Pulido is taking photos of the cheese every day to monitor the decomposition process and will post them on his blog at http://estebanpulido.blogspot.com/2008/10/american-cheese.html.
The photos of his art project have already been picked up by one online art gallery.
Pulido said he hopes the cheese makes people examine how they view the presidential and vice presidential candidates.
"To remind everyone that this is happening and it's serious but also we can laugh at it and look at cheese in a different way."
Julianna Parker 366-3541 jparker@normantranscript.com
