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'Pies for a Passerby'
Baking Up Performance Art on a Busy Brooklyn Street
 Listen to Melissa Block's report.
 View a photo gallery of scenes from the pie-making project
June 14, 2002 -- In the New York City borough of Brooklyn, artist Anissa Mack is turning pie into performance art, evoking a folk icon from a bygone era on a busy city street.
Mack has set up a picture-perfect miniature white cottage on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library. Inside, she's making pies. She leaves them, one at a time, on the window sills -- intending for them to be snatched away. Her art project, "Pies for a Passerby," is drawing curious crowds.
Thanks to a grant from New York's Public Art Fund, Mack spends four hours a day from Thursday through Sunday in her 8-by-10-foot cottage, churning out apple pies. Wearing one of the many ruffled aprons hanging inside her cottage, a smudge of flour on her freckled nose, she pulls another fragrant pie from her convection toaster oven every hour or so.
Then she leans out of one of the baby-blue shuttered windows, sets the pie on the window sill, and waits to see what happens. Quite often, a crowd gathers to snatch it up. NPR's Melissa Block discovered the reason for the ruckus: There's just something about free, fresh-baked pie. The "art" of the performance is the ironic statement of re-creating a small-town American scene in the middle of crowded, modern-day Brooklyn.
It's not that simple, however. If you want a pie too badly, Mack will do her best to see that you don't get it. If you're camped out, hogging the window sill for hours -- if you're the obnoxious boy screaming "Hurry up! Make the pie!" -- then forget about it. Instead, Mack might gently steer the pie toward another window where a patient child happily scoops it up.
For Mack, those moments are the whole point of her performance. She tells Block she likes creating an iconic country kitchen in the city, and she likes toying with the idea of expectation and surprise. Usually, the "pie snatch" is a happy moment. But sometimes she sees the worst in people -- like the time an adult woman snatched a pie from a 4-year-old's hands, and wouldn't share.
Then there was the day when the crowd grew huge, and some teenagers started kicking the sides of the cottage, demanding pie. And there was a break-in one night. The intruder took a clock, a drill, and -- of course -- stole a finished pie.
As she rolls out a perfect crust, Mack confesses she's not comfortable with strangers. So part of the challenge, part of the performance, has been getting used to being stared at, for hours at a time. "I think I look like I'm on stage," she tells Block.
Mack's performance will run through June 23, 2002 at the Central Library Plaza in Brooklyn, Thursday through Saturday 11 AM to 3 PM, and Sunday from 1 to 4 PM.
Other Resources
• New York City Public Art Fund
• The official Web site of the Brooklyn Public Library has a profile of Mack's performance and other upcoming art projects.
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