Sara Clugage
I am an artist, writer, and editor who focuses on food, craft, and aesthetic theory.
Gradient Cocktail, Sara Clugage.
Photo: Argenis Apolinario
Recent Project
IN THE LAND OF JELLY CRYSTALS
This zine illuminates jelly’s role in philosophical vitalism, the idea that living things are animated by some kind of spark or vital energy. It is based on a 1926 promotional pamphlet from Royal Gelatin, that follows Belinda—a modern housewife who learns to throw parties with sparkling, substance-less desserts that she makes without a maid to help her, quick as a flash of light.
Recent Writing
PAY ATTENTION
For an issue of Norwegian Craft’s magazine The Vessel, guest edited by Åsa Dybwad and Ben Lignel, I wrote about why we tend to see only some kinds of work as “skilled labor.”
Current Research
I am tracing the modern history of jelly from the late 18th through the 21st century, using cookbooks and gelatin ephemera to demonstrate how cooks’ thinking has been absorbed into intellectual history, shaping our concepts of embodiment, animacy, and abstraction.
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