It started as a snack but it grew into a dream.
There I was, Monday morning, 11AM, just getting out of psych. It wasn’t too long ago that I’d had breakfast, so it seemed a bit early to go straight to lunch, but I was still hungry. Luckily I, a capable and prepared adult, am fully armed with a whole arsenal of tools to combat crises just like this one.
So to the handy-dandy snack drawer I went, and pulled out a bag of pretzels. And most of them were pretty run-of-the-mill pretzels. I mean, they were fantastic, because I love pretzels, but nothing to write home about.
That is, until I found the pretzel that quite literally made me drop everything and text my mom right away.
It was perfect. It stood out among the rest in every way possible. Just this lone little pretzel. It probably got made fun of in elementary school for being different than the other young pretzels. I bet it was even a little bit insecure. But it in I saw something beautiful. I saw something…inspiring.
I had, right there in my lap, a piece of art. Truly.
Maybe I should clarify here. If I could spend every waking moment involved in art, I would do that. I’m trying to plan two separate trips over the summer to Phoenix and to DC and it’s 87% because Phoenix is gonna have lots of Frida Kahlo and DC has lots of Hieronymus Bosch. I get excited on rainy days because my umbrella is printed with Monet’s Water Lilies. Last month I saw two tubes of toothpaste facing each other and I took a picture to show my roommate because they made me think of The Creation of Adam. Yeah, the Michelangelo one. Yeah, toothpaste. My roommate thought I was crazy. I see art everywhere.
So, naturally—and I’m sure you’ve already guessed, because I’m sure you see it too (or maybe you just follow me on Snapchat)—this pretzel immediately made me think of The Scream. The bright orange; the long, thin features…it was practically the spitting image. I was overjoyed; I showed everyone, immediately, juxtaposing the picture of my pretzel with a picture of the painting just to really drive it home. Some people were into it, others were like, “Honey, it’s a pretzel.” My mom asked if I was on drugs.
Then the gears in my mind really started going. Why stop at one pretzel-to-painting comparison? Weren’t others out there? What if I had just found the key, and all I needed now was to unlock the whole wide world of Art Pretzels. I mean, they make art socks. And they put art on notebook covers, and they mention art within other art, and what if this was my portal into that world?
So I decided, right then and there, that I was going to open up a bakery. Not just any bakery, oh, no—this was a PRETZEL bakery. Like those awesome fluffy ones that you get at Disneyworld or the mall. And all of my pretzels were going to be inspired. They wouldn’t be purposeless twisted vessels for flavor. These pretzels would be revolutionary. Now you can have your painting and eat it too?! Ingenious! I cannot believe I am the first person to think of this. I’m starting immediately.
I am, of course, very qualified for this job. I am a skilled entrepreneur, because when I was a Girl Scout I sold at least six boxes of cookies and they weren’t even to my dad, and then I had an internship for three months this summer uploading photos of cars to a website and handing out pamphlets at the farmer’s market advertising for the dealership. I was basically the same thing as the CEO. I also know very much about art, because I’m halfway done with an art history survey class and am familiar with most of my flash cards.
That being said, even though I am an expert in every field I need to know in order to be successful in this pursuit, I still have some bugs to work out. Like what to name the business, and finding a location, and am I allowed to just reference whatever art I want to or are they copyright issues? Is The Scream copyright protected? How do I make pretzels, anyway?
(I googled it. The Scream is public domain. So I have one fewer problem now.)
But for all the answers I don’t have yet, what I do have is a pretty great draft of a couple menu items, and I figured I’d run them by you guys.
The Mona Lisa (Leonardo, 16th c.)
I think the Mona Lisa would be the perfect inspiration for a plain unsalted regular pretzel. You know, classic and easy to understand, and I mean, honestly, kind of a little bit boring sometimes, but you can’t help but love it anyway.
The Birth of Venus (Botticelli, 16th c.)
This would be the same thing as The Mona Lisa, except it would come with two different pretzel dips in little cups. The first one would be something kind of sugary and like a glaze, and the other would be more strawberry-buttercream-ish. Do people put buttercream on pretzels? They should.
The Scream (Munch, 1893)
Get this get this—the tagline for this one would be something like “Munch on this fun twist on a well-loved masterpiece” or something like that. Oh, goodness, I’m so clever. And the pretzel would be sriracha flavored.
The Kiss (Klimt, 1908)
I think it’d be cute to have this be made of cheese pretzels—you know, cause the colors—and then interlink pairs of mini pretzels together, since it’s a picture of two people. I think that’d be cute.
Girl With A Pearl Earring (Vermeer, 17th c.)
This one would be cinnamon sugar!!! Because then it would be kind of sparkly, and that’d be like how her jewelry is sparkly and also how her lip gloss was totally on point.
And I just thought of this right now, but we’d have the location look as similar to Nighthawks (Hopper, 1942) as possible.
Much like The Scream, none of these ideas are copyright protected, but please don’t be a jerk and steal my plan from me. It is the product of very much planning over the span of the next ten minutes while I finished off the bag of pretzels, and if someone else carried out this idea before I had a chance to that’d be super uncool. I’m trusting you guys on this.