“You can have the long lasting newness of stainless utensils- I’ll take a tool that feels “alive”, one that
speaks of its history in the kitchen.”                                                       -KATE KLIPPENSTEIN

My father’s kitchen utensils are arcane. They are worn, they are loved and they are used. They are not 
pristine, some don’t even shine anymore. They are scratched and rusted in places. Surprisingly, some 
of his most battered tools are his most coveted.

Kitchen utensils, particularly those of a professional chef, can often be mysterious, sometimes even 
obscure. This work explores my childhood perceptions of the tools my father used for cooking. The 
objects that I have created appear as echoes of the utensils to which they refer. Childlike and crude in 
their appearance, the objects also reference the more primitive nature of cooking utensils