Art Metropole

#06851

Altered Flakes

Artist

Reid Diamond

Format

Multiples

Description

“I’ll read anything on a cereal box. How else would I know the words calcium panthothenate, pyridoxine hydrochlorine (vitamin B6), thiamine

mononitrate? Having grown up on cereal – from Cap’n Crunch to Harvest Crunch – I have consumed as much useless language on the backs of boxes as I have useless food stuffs.” – Reid Diamond.

Produced for the Artist in Residence Program at Open Studio, Reid Diamond screen-printed various narrative stories onto the back panel of existing cereal boxes, with the contents replaced by styrofoam peanuts and, in one cereal, a large dry maple leaf. The stories relate either to the name of the cereal, the location of its production, or the cereal

itself. Each story reads “like an Aesop fable, with a Moral at the end.” Nine brands of cereal were used for this project including Shredded

Wheat, Cheerios, Count Chocula, Cocoa Puffs, Pebbles, Trix, Froot Loops, Lucky Charms, and Wheaties. The original print run included at least a dozen of each brand, coming to over 108 ‘prints.’ The list of ‘Ingredients’ on the side panels includes “added moral fibre”!

1.