Multiple Elementary/Ask Me Chocolates

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Lucidchart Document

Ask Me Choco­lates is an art­work by Helen Reed and Han­nah Jick­ling, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a grade 6 class at “Mul­ti­ple Ele­men­tary.” Ask Me Choco­lates is a series of lim­it­ed edi­tion artist mul­ti­ples, made with both milk and dark chocolate.

A choco­late is nev­er just a choco­late. Choco­lates car­ry sto­ries, like the East­er Bun­ny fable, and relate to long and rich his­to­ries like the impor­tance of cacao beans in Mayan cul­tures. Cacao trav­els vast dis­tances, pass­es through many hands and changes form mul­ti­ple times before it arrives at our near-by stores. Some choco­late bars hold a mys­tery — how do they get the caramel inside? Oth­ers trans­mit infor­ma­tion about their coun­try of ori­gin and the farm­ers who har­vest­ed the beans.

As artists, researchers, and ama­teur choco­latiers, we have pro­duced this col­lec­tion of choco­lates as minia­ture sculp­tures and sto­ry frag­ments. Like choco­late bars, these mul­ti­ples are designed for move­ment and distribution.

Lead­ing up to the mak­ing of our Ask Me Choco­lates we have been: sell­ing snow­balls, using the sub­way as a stu­dio, and vis­it­ing sites of choco­late pro­duc­tion. We have learned about trade, artists’ mul­ti­ples, the his­to­ry of bath­room humor in art, child slaves in the cacao indus­try, ‘labour­ness’ and artists’ inter­ven­tions into the world of com­merce. We are think­ing of this as ‘mul­ti­ple learning.’