Cake Walk

After wrapping up her art classes at Lynbrook High School for the summer this week, teacher Charlotte Kruk is heading to Paris in July to celebrate her 40th birthday. First, though, she has to finish her costume.

Kruk, known outside the classroom for her wearable sculpture, is crafting a dress meant to evoke Marie Antoinette's most infamous quote. The tight bodice and hoop skirt will be covered with empty sugar bags, flour sacks and other leavings from the baking process.

The artist will be touring the City of Light with a photography class and has volunteered herself as a model. She plans to don "Let Them Eat Cake" for photo shoots at famous locations like the Eiffel Tower and the palace at Versailles.

Since Marie Antoinette isn't necessarily a beloved figure in France, having been beheaded during the French Revolution, Kruk is somewhat apprehensive about how Parisians will respond to her project.

"I'm scared about how it's going to be received," she says. "I'm inventing an opportunity to show my work internationally."

But Kruk is no stranger to controversy: Her candy wrapper dresses resulted in M&M/Mars sending her a "cease and desist" letter in 2001, demanding that she "immediately turn over for destruction" the works she had made from the candy company's packaging. Although Kruk says she was "genuinely frightened" about possible legal action, she decided to craft an artistic response. Her "M&Matador" and "FlaM&Menco" pieces were recently part of the "Cease and Desist" exhibit at Saratoga's Montalvo Arts Center and are now on display in her home studio, along with the now-framed letter that inspired them.

M&M/Mars has since backed off on its demands. While Kruk's response to the potential quashing of her artistic expression was playful, the intent behind her work is more serious.

"The 'cease and desist' letter forced me to step back from my work and re-evaluate why I'm doing it and if I should be doing it," she says. "I realized I could do a better job of it. For it to be as important as I want it to be, it has to be that much better."

When she first started making her wearable sculpture in the late 1990s, Kruk had both personal and environmental reasons for doing so.

"My thought in doing this was that it would make me stop wanting sweets," says Kruk, who eats much of the candy contained in the wrappers she uses in her art. "It's forced me to look at my own sin."

While her sweet tooth has yet to be sated, Kruk's art has afforded her a constructive way to deal with the sins of others.

"I like the idea of repurposing. There's so much waste in our society," she says. "I see wastefulness, and I try to get other people to notice it without being confrontational or weird."

Kruk's quest for reusable materials for her Paris project has led her to Dumpster-dive for flour sacks at Le Boulanger. For other pieces, she has solicited empty Starbucks cups from fellow Lynbrook faculty members. She reuses plastic shopping bags to store clay for her ceramics classes.

During a visit to in Campbell, Kruk's hometown, the artist was horrified to see an employee "totally mutilating Crunch bar wrappers" before adding the chocolate to one of the shop's baked goods. So she volunteered to help unwrap the candy and kept the packaging.

Besides finding materials for her own work, Kruk was also able to arrange an exhibit of her students' sculpture at Psycho Donuts. Their doughnut-inspired art has had two showings at the shop thus far, and Kruk says she'd like to make it an annual event.

In keeping with her penchant for presenting social issues in a whimsical context, Kruk also made sure her students were aware of the controversy that swirled around Psycho Donuts two years ago, when mental health advocates took offense to the shop's theme and some of its menu items. She initiated classroom discussions about the issue as her students were creating their doughnut sculptures.

"They need opportunities to explore right and wrong, good and bad in a safe environment," she says.

With "Let Them Eat Cake," Kruk may be opening herself up to the same kind of exploration.