When Life Hands You Rotten Bananas, Make Art

When most of us are confronted with a ripe banana, we either turn it into banana bread or send it hurtling toward the trash, but Australian artist Jun Gil Park turns your run-of-the-mill banana into astounding works of art by drawing on the fruits with a toothpick. Park uses a standard toothpick to scratch pictures on the skin of bananas; the harder he presses the darker the bruise on the fruit becomes. After about five minutes, the oxidation will start to show, and after a day or two it will become pretty dark, contrasted against the fruit’s yellow skin.

So, why bananas? For Park, the inspiration to create banana art was really just a matter of finding himself with the necessary materials at his disposal. Park was sitting at a table with family one day with a toothpick in his mouth, when he picked up the banana in front of him and started to draw on it. When he saw the oxidation effect on the bruised fruit and how cool it made the skin look, Park decided to try for more complex designs. Check out Park’s banana artwork below.

(via Oddity Central)