When she tests a beet for firmness and looks for uniform color,
she's not planning to make a bowl of borscht or a grated beet salad.
Kacie, as she is known to American friends who can't master her
tongue-tripping name, is instead an artist shopping for a canvas, a
practitioner of the 700-year-old art of fruit and vegetable sculpture,
working in the mundane medium of the produce found in the grocer's bin.
"I started when I was about 10 years old," the Boulder resident
says of her training in the royal palace in her native Thailand. "It
was very strict."
Kacie studied the art for two hours every day after school and three to four hours on Saturday and Sunday.
Even then, it was a labor of love.
"My parents have a restaurant business," she says. "They see
that I like art. They want me to study. ... Even nowadays not too many
people know how to carve fruit."
The Thai technique of carving fruit and vegetable flowers
differs from its counterpart in Chinese, Korean and Japanese cultures,
where fruit and vegetable pieces are cut and held together with
toothpicks to make the sculpture. In Thailand, the fruit or vegetable
is carved in one piece. Kacie believes she is one of only three people
in the United States practicing the Thai method.
She creates sculptures of fruit sculptures, often piled in a
pyramid and lit with small lights, for weddings, parties and other
events where a spectacular centerpiece is desired.
This month, Kacie carved watermelon, beet, carrot and honeydew
roses for an auction fund-raiser at Shining Mountain Waldorf School in
Boulder.
"It was stunning," says Terry Retzloff, food coordinator at
Shining Mountain. "People were standing there looking for five and 10
minutes at a time. It really is a show-stopper."
Kacie begins a job such as the one for Shining Mountain more
than a week in advance. The melons and most other fruits will keep for
about seven days after carving, if they are wrapped and refrigerated.
Some will keep longer. Carrots, for example, will last 10 to 14 days.
For her biggest event, a Thanksgiving party in Vail, she
carved 200 to 300 carrot flowers, 100 beet roses, 10 honeydew melons,
10 cantaloupes, 10 miniature watermelons and five or six large ones,
plus an assortment of apples, cucumbers and mangoes.
While most of her carvings are decorative, she sometimes is asked to make carved crudit�s for partygoers to eat.
People dip the sculptures in ranch dressing, she says.
When she's working on a job, Kacie generally carves about four
to five hours a day, using a special hand-made paring knife with a long
triangular blade that's sharp on both sides and must be sharpened
daily. An image of Genesh, the god of arts and music, is carved into
the metal handle.
A rose made from a miniature watermelon takes about 45 minutes
to an hour to carve, depending on the design. Kacie charges $75 an hour
for her work.
Each fruit is different, and part of her job is to see the flower in the fruit.
"It comes from my experience looking at nature and flowers," she says.
To begin a sculpture, she looks at the fruit, studying its color and contours and imagining how the flower will form.
"Now this is the fun part," she says before making small,
elliptical cuts into a watermelon. The knife strokes release the sweet
smell of the melon, one of Kacie's favorite parts of carving. Her cuts
require extreme precision as she punches through the hard rind into the
soft melon to reveal the pink flesh. If she pushes too hard, the melon
will be ruined. Melons here are more difficult to carve, she says,
since Thai melons generally have a much softer skin.
As she works, the flower's design unfolds.
"You do it layer by layer, one petal at a time," she says.
Kacie also carves soaps and teaches Thai cooking at the Seasoned Chef in Denver.
But the fruit and vegetable carvings are her first love.
"I like to transform simple things into an elegant masterpiece."
Krongjit Chatuparisoot Zischke gets a little thrill from the produce department.
