Maurice Bennett (Toast Man)
President Obama Portrait
Polyurethane, Toast
2.7m x 2.4m
2010
Maurice Bennett was born in the late 1950s in Paeroa, New Zealand. He spent his young school life moving many times. At Auckland University, he got a certificate in civil engineering and a bachelor's degree in architecture. He was and still is very absorbed in all art forms. He is an abstract artist and loves to find all new forms of art and can see art through everything. He can find a way to express art from just about anything. Bennett's parents owned a local dairy which Maurice worked at, arranging stock and stacking cans. To entertain himself, he would arrange the bags of chips and the canned items in all sorts of uncommon ways instead of just the typical pyramid stack. He once came across a burning motorbike and was so fascinated by it because he could see the remnants of what it was and what it became. That inspired him to burn objects to make another abstract kind of art. He burned a TV, a sofa, a pile of women's shoes, and many other odd objects to make them look naturally abstract. This is when he knew that the flame was his paintbrush. One morning, he was making toast and was looking through a magazine and saw a picture that caused him to get the idea to make art out of toast. He took the toast out and started arranging it on his kitchen floor to look like the picture in the magazine. This is how he became "The Toast Man." He began making portraits and made one that was as big as a billboard. His discovery caused an explosion of commissions for portraits. He was also entered in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest toast mosaic.
Artist's statement: Maurice Bennett is very passionate about art. He can see art through everything and can transform any object into something artistic. For his toast art he uses a flame torch and metal molds to make patterns. His art really is different because he uses bread as his medium and makes it into mosaic style.
- President Obama Portrait
This portrait is of President Obama made entirely out of toast and bread. He used 4,234 pieces of toast in this creation. The way it is made is by making certain designs with metal that aren't flammable, then burning (or toasting) the design on with a blowtorch to get it the right shade. Next, the bread is soaked in Polyurethane to keep it preserved. The style is mosaic art (i.e. to look like tiny pixels) where each pixel is made of a slice of toast. This one was made in 2010 to honor of the inauguration of Obama's 2009 inauguration. You can still see this portrait in person today at Walrus Gallery on Taranaki Street in Wellington, New Zealand.
This portrait connects with our theme because it is made with a type of food. This food may not be edible after being soaked with Polyurethane but it was still once edible. I chose this work because it is so out of the box. They are large scale portraits that, from faraway, look like computer made images; once a viewer is up close, it becomes apparent that the medium used is toast and slices of bread. I chose it because the artist took such a bland and boring thing and turned it into something amazing.
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