I am saying goodbye to  the burger.  Thirty-eight years ago, I was taking art classes and working as a night assistant manager at a Hardee’s hamburger joint in Newton, Kansas.  In the course design-class exercises, I made a soft walnut, a la Claes Oldenburg–shell, nut meats, and all the papery dividers–made from cloth. After weeks of drawing and painting and color-matching walnuts, I began to look at my work world from a design standpoint too.  Each night, I trotted off to Hardees, where  I noticed the particulars of the Hardee’s hamburger (humble though it might be).

One day, I set out to make a soft sculpture of a hamburger.  Not just any hamburger–a Hardee’s hamburger.  It had the grill marks.  The meat patty was paper thin.  The diameter of the bun exceeded that of the patty.  And there was the random spatter of mustard and ketchup–as it was configured by those strange dispensers we used.

It got a laugh.  It even got a place in the final student art exhibition that year.  From then on, it traveled with me.  Here and there and finally even to Philadelphia.  But there was no place to put it.  I trotted it out occasionally, to amuse someone–particularly children.  But mostly it stayed wrapped up in plastic, in storage.

I am donating my hamburger to a little fundraiser.  Friends from church will be joining Christian Peacemaker Teams in a delegation to Palestine/Israel later this summer.  They need the funds and it is time to let art make peace.

I am told that several children may go to war, bidding over the thing.  Maybe we can just request a Christian Peacemaker Teams delegation to visit our Sunday school.