TOAST: a farewell to art.

As you can tell by the banner, Wellintonian Maurice Bennet reckons he's New Zealand's most reknowned artist. Just look at the pain-stakingly crafted representation of former 'Lois and Clark' star Dean Cain which was commissioned by 'Ripleys-believe-it or-not' for a story about-you guessed it- TOAST ART. Yes the producers of this show, who are used to dealing with things as mundane as a three headed child and men who can walk on water must not have believed their own luck when their 'Talent-scouts' stumbled across Maurice and his 'lunch'.

Other portraits include:
Helen Clark with a fruit bowl on her head, Jonah Lomu looking like a toasty down-syndromer, and The Mona Lisa (how could any great artist not have that in his repetoir? The famous subtlety shines through every burnt bit of bread). Maurice also brews his own beer. Being such a Wheaty lover, We at IS IT ART? are surprised that he has not started his own bread company as well.

But now it seems he's branching out into confectionary with his entry into the 'colour my world' competition held by the makers of M&M's. Guess what ingenious idea he came up with? That's right! With the blatant obvious-ness of a smack in the face from a hammer, Maurice painstakingly glued 5040 different coloured M&M's to a board to make a portrait of ex-golden boy of the rap world EMINEM!! GENIUS!!

http://www.mauricebennett.co.nz/default.htm

FURTHERMORE: You too can become a toast artist, but instead of using 4000 slices of burn-graded cocktail toast to make a massive ugly wall hanging, all you really need is a fine art brush, some butter, a slice of toast, a jar of marmite and an entry form to the MARMART competition. You could win a years supply of Marmite (6kg). IS IT ART wonders if it's worth the risk of using Vegemite to win the comp (a far superior brand) or any other yeast extract product? Could the judges tell? Tasting the 'art' must be illegal, right?

http://www.marmite.co.nz/home-page/marmart/gallery