The Fried Dough Ho

I wish I could take credit for this photograph. The image is a well known sculpture in Seattle entitled Black Sun, dated 1969, by Isamu Noguchi. It is located across from the Seattle Art Museum and is considered one of the “most touched, caressed, and fondled pieces of public art in Seattle.”

And the sculpture is of a giant doughnut. It is reputed that the rock band, Soundgarten, wrote the song Black Hole Sun based on this sculpture. Most people line up the Space Needle through the hole and while I took a picture during my recent visit, mine is not nearly as gorgeous as this, taken by Sunrisesoup.

So I will let you contemplate this stunning photograph of a pretty fantastic piece of art. Here’s what it looks like without the mist:

This may not happen often, but I will make it my mission to provide as many posts of artistic representations of doughnuts whenever and wherever I happen upon them. In this case, it was a delightful discovery while visiting Vancouver around the time of the Olympics. I never go anywhere without exploring that city’s museum offerings and in this case, it was the Museum of Vancouver which — much to my bliss — had a special exhibit devoted to the Art of Craft, a theme of which speaks to my heart. Mostly I was there to see the expansive selection of jewelry and metalwork, but how could I not be completely taken with this ceramic offering by Alberta artist, Brian McArthur?

Entitled Canadian Offering, the artist is known for reinventing classic folklore of Western Canada, the indigenous canoe is steered by mythical beavers and contains lusciously frosted and sprinkled chocolate doughnuts — all in clay, of course. While the exact dimensions were not posted, a little googling found it to be 25 x 13 x 76 cm. Pretty cool, isn’t it?