Risa Hirai is a Japanese artist who paints detailed images of bonsai trees and Japanese meals. But instead of using paint on a canvas, she works with icing on a cookie.
The 23-year-old is a senior at Tama Art University in Tokyo whose mouthwatering works will be exhibited at Gallery Tokyo Humanite all this week. Assistant director Maie Tsukuda tells The Salt it's the gallery's first cookie exhibit and notes that it's not an ordinary medium for artists.
"I started making these cookies as presents to my friends," Hirai told The Salt via email (Tsukuda helped translate). "I had painted in oils until then, but I became so into making cookies and began to think that this could be a form of expression as art."
Her canvases are usually vanilla-flavored, but she sometimes mixes things up with a cocoa, green tea or cinnamon base. After making the dough, she cuts it into the appropriate shapes (something a little more abstract than a gingerbread man) and bakes. Her icing is purely sugar, egg whites and food coloring, and like any other icing decorator, her tools are pastry bags with variously shaped tips.
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