Hose-Cream I

Hose-Cream I is a sculptural work by Sarah Keeling that visually references suburban life. Within the piece, softened strawberry ice cream is pumped out of a clear container and through a green garden hose. A lawn sprinkler attached to the end of the hose gently rocks back-and-forth as the ice cream flows out in a stream approximately two inches high. Once the tank is emptied, the puddle of ice cream surrounding the sprinkler is left as an artifact of the performance.

In Hose-Cream I, Keeling comments on the tension in many suburban areas created by the effort of maintaining a sterile, manicured appearance and the impractical and unsustainable desire for excess.

FRFAF-2013-01-Hose-Cream from STUDIO for Creative Inquiry on Vimeo.

Hose Cream was supported by a microgrant from the Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art @ the Frontier (FRFAF)— an endowment founded to encourage the creation of innovative artworks by the faculty, students and staff of Carnegie Mellon University. With this fund, the STUDIO seeks to develop a cache of groundbreaking projects created at CMU — works that can be described as “thinking at the edges” of the intersection of disciplines.

Sarah Keeling is currently a junior studying in the School of Art at CMU.