An Inclusive Litany

5/28/99

With management's approval, Cosimo Cavallaro created a work of installation art at New York's Washington Jefferson Hotel in which he covered one of their rooms with 1,000 pounds of melted cheese. The artist says he started covering objects with melted cheese as a way to work through unresolved emotional issues with his sometimes too-tough father. After one day covering his father's old armchair, which he had otherwise thought of reupholstering, with cheese, Cavallaro felt liberated. "It was a childish act. I was allowing myself to dirty this chair," Cavallaro says. "I guess I finally stood up to him."