I've just found a brilliant article (albeit slightly old; 2008) on LA weekly about Sarah Jo Marks, who runs DKE toys, along with her husband Dov Kelemer. However this article is not about her own work, it looks into Sarah's collection of plush food!































Her collection began with a dozen plush doughnuts:

' "Honey, what did you do?", Marks asked.

“I just bought you a crapload of fake doughnuts, that’s what,” said her husband, Dov. The doughnuts, stitched out of felt and decorated with sequin sprinkles, were a Valentine’s Day present. From then on, she became a lover of food rendered as stuffed toys. A collector of worm-ridden parsnips, a worshiper of felt toast, of carrots with teeth, of bananas that cry.
Today, two years later, Marks piles her collection of plush food onto the table. Pink cotton candy, pirate peas, an apple with a detachable worm, a portabella mushroom, shrimp sashimi, links of sausage and bratwurst, a melted ice cream cone, ribs, tofu, gyoza, pork loin. Gingerbread men with their parts bitten off. She hurls a stack of pancakes into the melee. Where is its pat of butter? Hiding under the angry asparagus, of course. A T-bone steak, nutritional analysis: 40 percent wool felt, 50 percent polyester fiberfill, 0 percent actual meat. “Love us,” implores its tag, “don’t eat us.”

I find it really interesting that plush food has been such a large part of someone's life, and although it adds a bit to my worry that it might be overdone as a theme, it goes to show that it has had a continued popularity for years and it has so many directions such as surreal, cute, realistic, etc.

Marks then went on to curate a plush food show called Stuffed in 2007, contributed to by artists such as the likes of my much-loved Heidi Kenney, Kenta Shibusawa (who I can't find anywhere, boo hoo!) and Snaggs!. I wish I could have gone to this show but it is obviously long gone.

'The show will be comprised of 3 main sections. The first is “The Feast”. The Feast will center around a plush turkey designed by Shane Geil of Purple Flavor and will be rounded out with lobster, sushi, pizza and many more mouthwatering food favorites. The second section is the “Dessert Cart” which will be spilling over with sweets, cakes and pies made of delicious looking felt and fabric. The third section is the “Grocery Store” which will have bountiful baskets of all different kinds of colorful plush foods that can be purchased and taken home starting on opening night! The Grocery Store will house fortune cookies, apples, doughnuts and more fun treats.'
It sounds amazing!