Montreal artist Shelley Miller creates intricate murals with sugar icing and edible paint applied like cake frosting, with a piping bag and tip. The street art starts out solid, but eventually disintegrates or washes away in the rain.
The installation above – called Stained – in Victoria, B.C., reflects the historic area’s ornate Victorian architecture. Miller says the title alludes to “sugar’s stained historical links to slavery.” Below, a sequence showing the disintegration of Cargo in Montreal (Duke St. at William St.) 66” × 138” at Day 1, Day 4, Day 5 and Day 7.
Above, installing Cargo / Below, detail of Cargo, a billboard in the style of a traditional Portuguese ceramic “azulejo.” Miller paints white sugar tiles with the blue edible paint, and affixes them with icing, then pipes the edges.
Below, Pipe Dreams in Montreal — cake icing applied to the side of an industrial building in a project that took two weeks to install. The final shot shows close-up detail at one week, six weeks and 12 weeks.
Shelley Miller does a wide variety of other public art installations, including moulded concrete and quilt-inspired designs in ceramic and glass mosaic.
Her sculptures and public works have been exhibited across Canada, India and Brazil. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art and Design and a Masters in Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal.
Shelley Miller’s website, here.
Categories: Street art
Canadian Art Junkie 
I just found this, after doing a google search of my name 🙂
Thanks for posting.
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You’re very welcome. Fascinating work. And (as you can see), lots of interest in it.
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I guess the artist deals with her disappearing art ….like really a gastranomic sculpture of a cake that takes hrs. but disappears ..after it’s eaten. Lives in the stomach memory of time.
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Love that after-it-eaten comparison. So true.
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these are fantastic, must be interesting after a while dissolving when it rains?
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Exactly. Lots of comments on how transient her installations are, and how fragile. Thanks.
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Super beautiful! I wonder why they did not do it indoors. I do realize that street art is supposed to be displayed out there but shouldn’t there be some consideration about the materials, etc? But then again, nothing lasts forever, I guess in the end its fragility became one of its most interesting points. Btw, It’s still hard for me to believe that it was made of edible stuff!!!
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I know what you mean about the edible paint side of it. Agree. I’m with you on the indoor vs outdoor question as well. I think you hit it exactly with your thought that the fragility is what makes it interesting. Thanks for taking the time to say so.
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Truly amazing! Great post, I’ll be sure to check out her website to see future murals.
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Glad you enjoyed it.
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I would be pained, personally, to watch my intricate creation disappear, but then again I don’t possess the talent to recreate stuff like this! I think watching it fall apart and fade is an exceptional part of her process and I love seeing the shots over time. It means more that it is transient, many separate works over the life of one project.
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The transience is perhaps part of the appeal? I love this comment.
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This is amazing – never seen anything like it in such a medium! It reminds me of Scott Wade, who paints intricate images on the dusty windshields of dirty cars (http://www.dirtycarart.com/), Andrew Goldsworthy (sort of) or the chalk sidewalk art of Julien Beever (http://www.julianbeever.net/). Really cool, especially with her in the shot you see how really large these things are!
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Had a chance to visit your suggested links. Thanks. Had seen Beever, but not Scott Wade. Love discoveries. Thank you.
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How beautiful and lacy her sugar art is. It makes me think of live music. The musician(s) play their instruments, I hear the music and then it’s gone into the air forever.
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What an appropriate parallel, lovely. Thanks.
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It’s interesting that numerous people (all three of you, for example) have similar reactions to the disintegration of these works. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Her other works (glass ceramics, moulded concrete, other creations) are permanent, though, so perhaps that allows the drive for permanence to lag in these works?
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Wow all that work and a few days later it’s gone.. madness if you ask me… I would want my art to stay specially if I was so good…
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These are beautiful. But I can’t imagine putting so much work into a piece to have it be washed away.
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These are amazingly intricate and beautiful…it’s hard to accept their relatively quick dissolution…
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