Grilled: A Q&A with Artist Robert Bolesta
From A Hamburger Today | Last week Serious Eats's Alaina Browne blogged about Value Pack, the typeface made from hamburger meat. Today, I bring you the man behind the meatfont, Robert Bolesta
What inspired you to create Value Pack?
It was made for a typography class I was taking at Pratt Institute. The project was to make an alphabet out of any found object. I wanted to do raw meat, and hamburger was the easiest to mold and shape into letter-forms.
What, if anything, does Value Pack say to the observer?
It was intended to be just a type study, but I suppose there are other levels of meaning, if you choose to read into it. I made it before I read Fast Food Nation
Who are your artistic influences or inspirations?
I am graduating in about a month, so right now a couple of my professors have had big impacts on me.
How long did it take to make Value Pack?
A frustrating day to shoot it. I went home to Pennsylvania to do it so I'd have more space. I repackaged each one individually, and I figured out that regular plastic wrap doesn't look the same as industrial plastic wrap, so at midnight I drove to the 24-hour grocery store and asked them if they would go back behind the meat counter to get me a sample of the industrial kind. They actually did it! It was awesome, but it made me feel weird when they watched me leave. They had this look on their faces like they had just given a murderer his weapon.
