Blog Assignment #4: Artist Statements and Critiques

Sai corrected my artist statement today, and one of the things he told me was that I needed to include evidence. He said that I didn't support my statements enough, and that made it sound like I was just putting whatever came to my head first. He also didn't really like my intro, and said to either shorten it or cut it out completely. The last thing he said was that I didn't answer the most important question in the project, and maybe I didn't. I'm just not quite sure how to go about comparing myself to hot dogs. So that's one thing I'll deifnitely work on for draft two. As far as the intro, I quite like it, so I don't know how much I'm going to tweak that.

Anyway, here's the essay with some minor changes.


Oh glorious times the baby days were. Barfing, pooping and crying anytime I wanted, with my mother constantly hovering over me, holding a spoon and saying “There there, small Kyle. Fret not, for I, your mother, shall place this glob of pear-banana mixture in your toothless mouth, and not get angry when you proceed to spit it back up on me.” Ah, yes…those were the days. It’s a shame I can’t recall them, because I’m sure my face would be forever lit by the fond memories of babyhood. However, there is one way to go back. Whenever I want to feel as happy as a newborn, I just hop into my time machine and press “3-0-enter”, and away I go on another grand adventure down memory lane.
Okay, enough with the cheesy theatrics. What I’m really trying to get at here is the deliciousness of hot dogs. Ever since my very first nibble on a hot dog at the tender age of two, I’ve been hooked. I used to eat them almost nightly back in that south Floridian apartment complex I spent my childhood in. And even though I can’t remember those first few bites, it’s obvious that it was a staple of my diet then and still is today.
In fact, the mysterious hot dog is a staple of many diets around the world. From its humble beginnings in Europe to its over-exposure in America, the hot dog has always been easy to process, easy to prepare and easy to eat. Whenever I taste the strange concoction of who-knows-what’s-in-those-things, it conjures up memories of enjoying a nice foot-long dog at the boring baseball game my parents dragged me to once. But the foot-long hot dog made everything millions of times better. It was piled high with mustard, ketchup and relish, barely fitting in the bun it was served on, making the tiny dots on the baseball diamond seem like nothing but distractions from my delicious journey through flavor. Experiences like these are what make me wonder if everyone feels the same way as I do, or if I’m just a crazy little child.
Come to think of it, the ancients who consumed hot dogs (or tube steaks, as they were called in ye olden times) on a regular basis probably did have the same experiences as me. That could be why the hot dog is such a popular food item nowadays. If it wasn’t amazing in the days of its conception, how would so many different recipes and styles get created? I think that back when beef and pork were delicacies, the “tube steak” was considered to be a meal of the highest quality. It’s only natural that it would be adapted into so many different iterations. The only difference would be that back then the people didn’t have sporting events or movie theaters to enjoy hot dogs at, and they certainly didn’t think it would become an icon in its own right.
The point is that I love hot dogs immensely. I could go on and on about how delicious they are and continue to make your stomach growl; that is, as long as you didn’t think too hard about what’s actually in a hot dog. That said, I don’t care about what They put in a hot dog, or how processed and unhealthy hot dogs are for you. The history and evolution of the hot dog doesn’t interest me, either. No, I care about the nostalgic feelings that I get when the microwave dings and I put the frank in the bun, then proceed to smother it with condiments. It’s the way that the perfect brown color appears on that big, fat, plumps-as-it-cooks Ballpark Frank. All the fun of a hot dog is getting to the part where you take the first bite, and it’s the same for many others in our society. It’s this experience that keeps people like me coming back for the mystery meat time and time again.