American ceramist and filmmaker Madelynn De La Rosa: the joy of making silly art pieces, and the sources of inspiration behind ‘Maddie Cakes’
Madelynn De La Rosa – ceramic sweet treats for an everlasting sugar rush high
Madelynn De La Rosa is a filmmaker, video editor, and ceramist based in Los Angeles, California. De La Rosa’s works are ceramic reproductions of sweet treats from all over the world, from the marzipan peanut candy (Mazapán) from the Mexican brand de la Rosa, the German ice cream sundae Spaghetti Ice Cream (Spaghettieis), to the Sicilian Cassatella di sant’Agata or Minne di Sant’Agata, a traditional sponge cake originating from Catania, Italy.
Foreign delicacies aren’t the sole items on the De La Rosa menu of ceramic sugary treats, which features more widely-known desserts like meringue buttercream and candied cherries-decorated birthday cakes, strawberry ice cream bars, heart-shaped lollipops, candies, and assorted croissants.
Madelynn De La Rosa aka Maddie Cakes
As Maddie Cakes, De La Rosa has participated in art exhibitions in LA. Madelynn De La Rosa’s series of Trompe l’oeil porcelain hanging plates, It’s My Party, was featured at the group exhibition Potluck between February 18th and March 11th, 2023 at the Los Angeles (Culver City) contemporary art gallery of Hashimoto Contemporary.
Later this year, between May 20th and June 11th, 2023, Madelynn De La Rosa’s works were part of the exhibition Cake Walk at the Tetrapod Gallery along with those of fellow ceramist and Los Angeles resident Christine Mai Nguyen also known as CERAMRAP.
Madelynn De La Rosa’s fascination with imitating food in art
De La Rosa’s pastel and primary-color saccharine ceramic-based treats are contemporary takes on a centuries-long tradition of representing and imitating food through visual mediums. The central emblem of the large floor mosaic from Tomb D in the Grotte Celoni area, which can be seen at The National Roman Museum in the Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome, features a fruit basket and dates back to the end of the last century BC or the beginning of the 1st century AD.
In the seventh century, Still life, which includes pictorial representations of foods, became a popular artistic genre throughout Europe. This was the century in which the Italian Baroque painter Giovanna Garzoni and the Flemish painter Clara Peeters were working on their Still life paintings, such as Garzoni’s ‘ Still Life with Bowl of Citrons‘ (J. Paul Getty Museum) and Peeters’s 1611 Still Life with Nuts, Candy and Flowers (Museo del Prado).
Trompe l’oeil according to Madelynn De La Rosa
Like De La Rosa’s works, the Trompe l’oeil ceramics that were all the rage in England in the eighteenth century were, as the name implies, with Trompe l’oeil meaning to ‘fool the eye’ in French, representations of foods created by potters with a great deal of attention to detail and a humoristic undertone.
These objects, such as the Asparagus-bunch-shaped Tureen, made in England around 1756 by the Chelsea Porcelain Factory and now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London’s Ceramics collection featured a vitreous-like surface obtained through enamel paint, were made of soft porcelain (porcelain tendre) and had a decorative purpose.
Madelynn De La Rosa at the ceramic studio – a behind the scene with Lampoon Magazine
Madelynn De La Rosa ceramic desserts are made in a pottery studio in Los Angeles. De La Rosa does not use a wheel to shape the clay but hand-builds the pieces from a variety of types of ceramics.
«I use a bunch of different clays; it depends on the project I am working on. I’ve worked with porcelain before for a show at the Hashimoto Contemporary art gallery. Usually, though, it’s just whatever I can get my hands on. Sometimes it’s red clays. Other times, it’s white clays». De La Rosa explained.
Not only are Madelynn De La Rosa ceramics made to resemble confectionaries, but several of the tools De La Rosa uses would also fit right into a kitchen. In fact, Madelynn De La Rosa’s yellow Japanese toolbox stores standard kitchen tools like chopsticks, forks, and frosting piping nozzles in addition to traditional ceramics tools such as polymer ribs, stilts, and brushes.
«Everything I make is hand built, so I don’t have measurements. I cut out papers for the last show, so I reverse-engineered those pieces, but usually, I eyeball it. I often use a slab roller that flattens the clay, and then I cut out shapes. So there’s a lot of math and geometry involved in the process. But for my Twizzlers, I use the extruder. I feel it out and play with it until it looks right. I don’t use molds, so every cake I make is different».
Madelynn De La Rosa: working within a community of makers in LA
After the hand-building process is conducted and the clay is dry, the pieces are bisque fired in the kiln. After the glazing, the ceramics are in for a second firing round in the kiln. The results are brightly colored ceramic confectionaries with a glassy coating. De La Rosa works in a studio with other ceramists, which has allowed the artists to become part of a supportive community of local makers.
«It’s nice to have that sort of community. Everyone there is so different and has specific things they make. People will try out different glazes or textures, and everyone’s open about what they do. If you are stumped on something, someone usually knows how to help». Said De La Rosa. «Some people are technical and knowledgeable, and everyone has their strong suit, so it is nice to ask things».
Madelynn De La Rosa: discovering a new medium
Like many other creatives De La Rosa, who has been working as a video editor and filmmaker in Los Angeles since 2015, has discovered a new medium during the COVID-19 pandemic.
«I have been making videos for so long, and I still do, but I think making something tangible and working with your hands is meditative. I would always go to the studio with my friend Christine (Mai Nguyen) and play around with clay, not knowing what I was doing. Then in 2020, I joined this space, and so this became my safe haven during that time». Explained the artist. «During 2020, I was making things using my intuition, making whatever I wanted. There was no real plan. I was doing it for fun».
The visual sources of inspiration behind Maddie Cakes sculptural production
The choice of creating colored ceramic cakes and other desserts has come from the many sources of inspiration Madelynn De La Rosa draws from for Maddie Cakes’s creations. These include the works of fellow ceramicist Reniel Del Rosario and artist Rose Egan. Imagery from the 2006 film Marie Antoinette about the omonimous Austrian Archduchess turned Queen of France, directed by American director Sofia Coppola has also influenced the Angeleno artist.
One of the most influential scenes from the movie, which as a whole features a color palette rich in blues and pinks that resembles that of De La Rosa’s work, is its ‘ I want candy by Bow Wow Wow montage, which presents a parade of cotton-candied, strawberries-topped desserts much like De La Rosa’s.
Reclaiming and honoring childhood through art – Madelynn De La Rosa
The artist’s comfort foods-inspired ceramic pieces with their glossy-finish and better-than-real-life looks seem to come straight out of one of Ghibli Studios food scenes which have become internet sensations on their own like the much-recreated chocolate cake from the 1989 Hayao Miyazaki animated movie ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service. The cartoonish quality of ‘Maddie Cakes’ ceramic sculptures is not coincidental, as the world of animation and childhood stories have, in fact, inspired De La Rosa’s aesthetic.
The writers and illustrators the artist loved as a child, such as Ludwig Bemelmans, the author, and illustrator of the ‘ Madeline’ children’s books series; author and illustrator Richard Scarry; Charles M. Schulz, the creator of ‘ Peanuts’ and British author Roald Dahl have inspired the whimsy and playfulness of De La Rosa’s ceramic sculptures.
«I don’t have a sweet tooth, and I never had one, but cakes are so playful, silly, and whimsical. Nobody needs a ceramic cake, but it brings so much joy. It’s a light-hearted fun piece of art to have: my whole apartment is filled with them. It’s like Maddie Cakes’s land in my apartment, which is fun. These authors have inspired me: I grew up reading Roald Dahl, Bemelmans’s Madeline, and Charles Schultz. I grew up watching and reading their work. I also love food in films. I love how everything looks so beautiful in films, and being able to make something that you can hold or have as a centerpiece is a fun experience».
Madelynn De La Rosa
American video editor, filmmaker and ceramist. Born in Germany, De La Rosa studied at George Mason University and has been working as video editor and filmmaker since 2015.
