BUTCHER GUIDE
With visual aid, the intricacy and complexity of our environment can be better understood. There are many tools that artists and visual designers use to better deliver readable information. Nature is composed of blurry lines, boundaries that are not so easily defined. Through study and abstraction, those complex systems become compartmentalized and the parts become differentiated.
This collage represents the sometimes hard-to-discern meat cuts of a whole beef (or half rather). Typically separated into four quadrants called beef primals or quarters, each section of the beef has distinct muscle structures and cuts that can be trimmed, handled and cooked in different ways.
Butcher's Beef Breakdown Map, 2021. Van Dyke brown collage, 33"x 25".
Understanding where on the body the beef cut comes from brings insight into how to cut and cook them.
For example, the tough muscles of the legs are used a lot as they hold up the weight of the cattle... and have lots of tendons and connective tissue that can make for chewy texture. By cutting the meat from much of that connective tissue, and slow cooking the meat to tenderness, it is very palatable.
This large Van Dyke brown collage uses different values of brown photographic paper that has been stencil cut and layered to identify the muscles (dark brown), from the bones (lightest brown/tan), and the trim and fat (medium brown).
The meat map provides a spectrum of depth, as if seeing an x-ray view of the parts, but are stylized to provide a useful guide for where to cut and separated the muscles.
Butcher's Beef Breakdown Map: Round, 2021. Van Dyke brown collage.
Many butcher guides can be hard to follow from one single image or do not show the big picture leaving out valuable information. While there are many ways to butcher beef, and other cuts not shown or labeled on this map, the locations in relation to each cut are the focus in this diagram. Knowing which bones are where becomes the guide for the viewer and the blade.
Butcher's Beef Breakdown Map: Ribs, 2021. Van Dyke brown collage.
This work is a culmination of the Artist's understudy as a Butcher and as an Artist, and using that combined knowledge to create a visual tool for imagining the potential in a slab of beef through a useful guide.
It is also featured on a two page spread in Tyler Deem's recently released book, Manifestations: A Collection of Artworks and Essays on Life, At and Perception, 2023.
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