Pretty Enough To Eat

Over the past year, Jeff Nebeker's ceramic doughnuts have gone deliciously viral, with each new batch attracting lines around the block outside midtown's Elliott Fouts Gallery. With National Doughnut Day fast approaching on June 6, we talk to the 68-year-old Sacramento artist and former baker about his "yum aesthetic."

By Sean Timm

--

It's safe to say that your ceramic doughnuts have captured people's imagination. The TikTok videos of them that Elliott Fouts Gallery co-owner and director Michelle O'Brien posted over the past year have garnered over 10 million views, CBS Mornings did a segment on your doughnuts, and each new batch sells out within minutes. What do you think accounts for their popularity?

Because they're bright and they're comedy. They Look so natural and so yummy, you want to eat them. When they're on a plate, it's a trick: "Oh, I thought those were real." There's a lot of comedy to that. And the cheeriness of the colors—I wasn't just interested in [creating] a chocolate doughnut or a white doughnut with coconut. I wanted pink with sprinkles, yellow with chocolate chips, polka dots and stripes. I wanted them to look like orange meringue. In my mind, I could see them all colorful, like Christmas packaging. That's what I wanted them to look like. And when you see them on the wall, you feel creative yourself.

What first inspired you to make dessert art?

In my memory, it is very early. I instinctively always wanted to learn how to be a baker. I loved the way they could create something out of nothing with frosting and flour: I would beg my parents [to teach me] —I was a pest in the kitchen. Cake decorating is an incredible art form. With kids, that's one of their first [art] experiences their first birthday cake. It encourages imagination, encourages playing, and encourages you to be yourself.

I was raised in Roseville. By fifth grade, I was mowing lawns and selling cakes to make extra money, and when I was in the seventh grade, there was a McClellan Air Force Base TV special. One of their chefs was making a cake, and they showed how. He had the little spinning flower wheel, made a rose and placed it on the cake he had in front of him, and then made the borders. That was the first thing I saw that (made me] think I would like to do that as a career. I was like, "Wow." It was colorful and just magic.

So [baking] became my original medium, essentially. In high school, I was entering cake decorating shows at the Napa fair, the Placer County Fair and that sort of thing, and winning awards. I was written up in the Roseville Press Tribune for wanting to be a baker.

I was always art-curious as a kid. I played out in the mud most of the time, not with cars, but making little civilizations. Or in the winter months, I would color with crayons or draw.
Seventh or eighth grade was the first time I got to touch clay and make something: I was hooked. From then on, I knew I [also] wanted to be a ceramic artist. My plan to make ceramic cakes and doughnuts and cupcakes that was my first art decision. In high school, I took art classes and learned more about clay sculpture, and then I went to Sierra College for art. Since I already knew that I wanted to make cakes and doughnuts, I was just very after the professors about how I could do that.

Then in 1977, you transferred to UC Davis, whose art department had professors like the renowned sculptor Robert Arneson and iconic painter Wayne Thiebaud. What did you learn from them?

The work ethic for one, and the playfulness. I was always demanding, almost obnoxiously pursuing [skills like] how to glaze. I didn't even consider pottery I went straight for sculpture, and immediately got a class from Bob Arneson. That was my goal: If I'm going to have a class in ceramics, it's going to be with Bob Arneson. He was like a guru to artists at that time, and he was very appreciative of somebody who wanted to be an artist.

I have about 75 stamps for textures. I just made a [new] one it's a raisin. So I stamp it into the clay and it looks like a raisin on a cookie. UC Davis taught me about stamps. Carving, poking, softening with a paint brush, re-carving, and then trying it out on wet clay and seeing if it works. Another student said, "They're real popular in L.A.," and I said, "Oh, let's find out how to make one." So we asked Arneson and he said, "Yeah, you can make them. I'll show you how."

I had Wayne Thiebaud as an art history professor, and it was fun to meet him
again. Completely enchanting.

You had met Wayne Thiebaud before? When was that?

In high school. My neighbor was a painter. She would enter art shows [for which] Wayne Thiebaud was a juror. He came to her house, and that was the first time I met him it was amazing. By then; I was already an accomplished cake decorator. He had a painting of a meat dish and asked me what I thought about it. My eyes got big. I saw the texture that he used, and I knew, "Wow, that's really neat."

As you know, Thiebaud was famous for his depictions of desserts. Did his paintings of pies and cakes influence you?

My favorite paintings of his are the cityscapes, oddly enough. The ones that have the sensation of going up and down the hills because of the physical sensation. I'm after the "yum" of food, and he was kind of after that movement sensation.

Speaking of which, when you describe your food art, you use the term "yum aesthetic." Can you explain what you mean by that?

The yum aesthetic is the visual of food. You go to look at [a ceramic dessert], and it's really clay, but you think that it's food. So I try to appeal to the senses, the texture of real food. With sculpture, it's tangible. And a lot of times, the sculpture can be so stylized that it's more exciting than seeing the real cake there. It feels like it's more than you imagined. That's what I strive for. I think my best pieces have that "more and beyond" feeling. Like you think, "I love chocolate cake. I want a piece of chocolate cake." I make the cake a two-serving size, so I'm encouraging the viewer to respond with another person. And if that brings excitement, that's the piece of art that I want to make.

You've also made many real chocolate cakes during your other career as a baker. Can you tell us a little about that?

When I went to Sierra College, I worked as the head cake decorator at the Roseville Square Bakery. It was in business for about three years. And then I taught cake decorating at the Roseville Community College. When I got to UC Davis, needing more money, I worked at a popular doughnut shop called Fluffy Donuts. The doughnut maker, Tom, taught me all sorts of things about how to make a doughnut. It was really fun. Of course, I shared with him my idea of doing ceramics, and then he got upset, saying, "Well, are you going to quit because you're making ceramics?" And I said, "No, I don't want to quit!" So I made doughnuts there for years. Then I got a job at Winchell's, here in Sacramento, on El Camino. I love their food posters. They had posters with luscious caramel dripping all over, and they had great ads on TV in those days.

Later this would be 1989 I went to [work at] UC Irvine. For their dormitory food service, they had baker positions. We would make 300 dozen doughnuts a day, and 16 pies a day, and all these loaf cakes. I was putting my arms into big mixers, bringing up the dough. It was like mixing clay.

Then, 1996, I came back up to Sacramento. I wanted to be with my sister and my dad. My mom had passed away, and I just needed to be with family. Got my journeyman baker's certificate from the bakers union, and got a job at Safeway the Vacaville Safeway for the majority of my years, then the Davis Marketplace Safeway and then I quit in 2001, And I kept up with ceramics simultaneously. I worked with [local ceramist] Tony Natsoulas in his studio firing ceramics.

Are there overlaps between baking food and sculpting food?

I mix and match all the time. For instance, [as a baker], I learned to manipulate my fingers into making these delicate little [edible] flowers. So when it came to clay cakes, I was ready to make a [clay] flower. Even laying out clay on my table, I use my hands like I'm making Danish dough, and then I use the roller.

Are there new doughnuts or other ceramic foods that you're working on?

I have bacon maple doughnuts in the works I'm trying to get that bacon to look really yummy with maple glaze. I've been working on that for months now. I have waffles I want to make. Bon-bons, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and cakes I have a whole bunch of new] cake ideas. So that's a lot. And all kinds of ice cream things.

Just in time for summer, you'll be debuting the ice cream cones at a meet-and-greet ice cream social at the Elliot Fouts Gallery on July 12. What can people look forward to with this art?

They look like ice cream cones. Not ultra-real, but they're real enough to make you want ice cream. Two scoops and single scoops. They stand upright on little [cake] cones, and they come in different flavors, whatever flavors I can figure out: strawberry, mint chip, chocolate, sherbet, blueberry or boysenberry swirl.

And with the many different flavors in your doughnut art, I have to ask, do you have a favorite kind of doughnut?

To eat, I really like plain old-fashioned or the coconut. Classic doughnuts. But I don't eat that many doughnuts anymore. Those days are long gone. I'm a salad guy now.

But to look at, I want sprinkles and little gooey things. I like where you can see them being made Donut King on Greenback [Lane] and San Juan [Avenue] is the closest doughnut shop to me and it's really fun to go there. It's a 24-hour doughnut shop, and it's been there quite a while. The display, watching them being made. And the friendliness. You can tell they have that rapport with their customers I respond to that. That's important to me because that's also the art experience.

This Q&A has been edited for length, flow and clarity. For more information, including how to join the doughnut-drop email alert list, visit www.thegallerygirl.com.