LiNda BaRtLett - She Takes the Cake
By Sally Hansen

Working out of her designer cake shop in Dunrobin, Linda Bartlett is the happy proprietor of her fast-growing business creation, the girl with the most cake. Here she takes the art of cake making to new artistic heights, creating one-of-a-kind masterpieces in her chosen sculptural medium of cake and icing. Each cake is unique. Each cake is astonishing. And each cake is delicious.

"Your cake made our event spectacularly special!" "I started to cry when I saw the wedding cake you made for me!" "You made me feel like a princess!" The phone calls and cards from her ecstatic customers are her bread and butter as she lets them eat cake.

Through experimentation, practice and study, Linda has developed a series of gourmet recipes for both the cakes (Belgian chocolate, white Belgian chocolate, vanilla, lemon poppy-seed, and carrot) and her pure butter-cream icings. Made from scratch with free-range eggs, vanilla beans and only the finest ingredients, these cakes taste as good as they look, and that's saying a lot. If you have ever dreaded swallowing the aerated grease that serves for frosting on many obligatory special-occasion cakes, your first bite of cake by the girl with the most cake will leave you forever hopeful that all your future hosts will be Bartlett customers.

Linda's penchant for saturated colours and her flare for fun and funky are obvious the second you step into the 120-year-old dwelling that houses the business. The first clue is her hair. The second is the tiger-striped sofa against the pink wall. Linda and her partner, Amy Forrest, are in the throes of renovating their new home. Naturally, the kitchen is at the heart of the project. Amy, who does most of the baking, lobbied hard for the new Jenn-Aire double oven; a huge island workspace serves as the studio for the glamorous cake sculptures that range from ravishing to whimsical, depending on the occasion and the tastes of the customer.

Not a Piece of Cake
Bartlett's artistic talents are not confined to cakes. Unusual plants are everywhere, and several stunning orchids are in full bloom. The walls are hung with wonderful botanical drawings of all sizes. When I inquire, Linda tells me the drawings are from her series titled "Drawstrings," rendered in graphite and Prisma colour blocks on mulberry paper. Her love of plants blossomed during her jobs in a florist shop and a garden centre as a student growing up in Orillia. "I was always drawing, and my family was really supportive and encouraging; I just naturally migrated to Fine Arts when I went to University." She received a BA (Hon) in Art and Art History from the University of Toronto/ Sheridan College in 1994, and a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Windsor in1996.

Bartlett worked as a drawing instructor at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design for seven years, while pursuing her career as an artist. She also was a design instructor for four years at the University of New Brunswick's Multimedia Studies BA Program. She has shown her performance and installation works both nationally and internationally in various solo and group exhibitions, and has received grants from the Canada Council and the Province of New Brunswick.

In 2003 Linda and Amy moved to Carp from Fredericton, NB, so that Amy could enrol in Carleton University's Industrial Design program. They bought their vintage Dunrobin home in 2004, and they have converted the barn into their woodworking shop. Bartlett has built some incredible cake stands, and they do all the framing for her pictures.

Having your cake and eating it too
Linda's interest in an edible medium for her art evolved from the work she did during university days around a subject that is equally pressing today - body image. "I spent a lot of time exploring the contradictions between what is beautiful and what is good for you," she explains. "At one time I toyed with the idea of only eating beautiful flowers. If you are what you eat, where does the aesthetic come in? But I realized I couldn't possibly grow enough flowers to survive." She published an article on eating disorders in a California magazine. Eventually she came to the conclusion that it's quality, not quantity, that counts.
The experience of savouring the girl with the most cake's artistic talents is a quality one. It is, however, fraught with conflict. How can you actually eat something that beautiful? For most of us, it's a problem we can handle. The recipe for pure pleasure is simple: take a photograph; eat.

Cake decorating as performance art?
In a flash of creative brilliance, Linda Bartlett invented "CupCake," a new form of performance art, as a fundraising event for two art galleries in Sackville, NB, in 2001. Wearing a pink tutu, she steps into the bottom layer of a giant, hollow cake that rotates (almost imperceptibly) on a wooden platform, training wheels and rotisserie motors. As the performance progresses, layers of cake, covered with a flat coat of icing, are lifted and placed over her head almost like a ring toss. From within the cake she elaborately decorates each layer. At midpoint in the construction, she emerges wearing a red velvet dress, the hem of which is attached to the cake with a hoola-hoop enabling her to spin 360° in both directions independently of the cake.
The performance continues until all layers have been stacked and decorated, and can last anywhere from thirty to ninety minutes, depending on the length of the event. Finally she disappears beneath the dress, emerges with a knife, and begins to cut her way out of the cake until each member of the audience has been served. Commissions are invited.

Where's the Cake?
You don't have to wait until a discerning host invites you to an event featuring a cake by the girl with the most cake. You don't even have to wait until the Carp Farmers' Market resumes in May on Saturdays from 8AM-1PM. Simply call Linda Bartlett at 839-2741 for a free consultation. Visit her website at www.thegirlwiththemostcake.com for examples of the glamorous treat you can give yourself and/or others, and click here to see more examples of her scrumptious cake creations.