By Tracey Middlekauff

NEW YORK — With all the flap over the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s controversial “Sensation” exhibit, isn’t it time to find some art we all can love?

Liebman Magnan A tofu head sleeps in its watery grave

And what could be more lovable, more innocent, more squeezably soft, than … tofu?

At New York City’s Liebman Magnan Gallery, patrons can take in an eyeful of the sculpted bean curd as part of the Control Freak exhibition, by installation artist David Shapiro.

Shapiro, a 36-year-old Brooklyn resident, has been creating tofu casts of heads for the past three years. His inspiration came, he says, when he was eating some of the stuff: “I stuck a chopstick in a piece of tofu and I had that moment.”

Part of the attraction of casting heads in tofu is the appealing lack of clutter they leave behind, the artist says. “It’s a relief there’s nothing left at the end.”

Also, the tofu heads mimic real life, according to Shapiro: “You live in a human body. You’re gonna rot and die.”

Liebman Magnan The tofu couples on display, stacked in a refrigerator

Plus, they make an amusing party treat. At the show’s opening, tofu heads were served to guests.

Shapiro’s current tofu work, at Liebman Magnan until Oct. 16, is entitled Tofu Couples. In this work, a pair of quivering tofu heads each occupies a vat of water. The vats are then stacked in a large, industrial refrigerator. The heads are those of couples, both current and defunct. Some of the faces are pristine; some have begun to crack. A piece of nose on one of the heads floats peacefully on the top of the water.

“I tried to represent,” Shapiro explains. “There’s your white breeder couple, interracial couples, a divorced couple.”

One fun aspect of the show, he says, is when the couples come to look at themselves. “They want to see who will rot first, who’ll stick around. “There’s something tacitly creepy and sexy about the whole thing,” he says.

But don’t get the idea that any old store-bought tofu is good enough to be art. Shapiro worked with David Eng, a tofu manufacturer in New York’s Chinatown, to get the formula just right. According to Shapiro, Eng thought he was nuts at first, but he soon became interested in the whole idea. “I spent every Saturday for six months hanging out in a tofu plant,” Shapiro laughs.

Besides, he explains, “Tofu is just edible plaster of Paris and calcium sulfate.”

Liebman Magnan Shapiro’s ‘Collapsible Self-Portrait’

The tofu art isn’t the only non-traditional piece in Shapiro’s current exhibition. Hallucinate is an arcade video game produced through Jed Brain Pictures. The player must navigate a bad acid trip through New York City. The piece is based on Shapiro’s own life: When the artist was 15, he endured an LSD trip gone bad and woke up naked on the Long Island Railroad. His mother was understandably worried when he didn’t come home for three days, and the video game includes an image of her, carrying a plate of chicken, pleading, “David, come home.”

Shapiro says that when he found himself sans clothing, he happened upon a group of boys who told him he should go sleep in the subway conductor’s shack. He broke into the shack, which he says was “filled with newspapers and packets of ketchup.”

Shapiro fashioned a nifty newspaper suit for himself, and proceeded to eat the packets of ketchup. “The ketchup ended up all over the newspaper suit, and it looked like dried blood,” he says. But that served as the inspiration for yet another piece in his current show: Collapsible Self-Portrait. The sculpted figure is wearing — you guessed it — newspaper. The floor is strewn with packets of ketchup.

Another piece in the Control Freaks show reflects what Shapiro likes to do when he’s depressed: pick up objects on the street. He says this helps him get out of himself. “I try to pick up three objects from the street a day,” Shapiro says. “Or I’ll look through the trash.” He places the objects in individual drug bags and hangs them on the wall, resulting in a sort of mosaic.

Liebman Magnan Detail of found objects in Shapiro’s mosaic

It’s the tofu, though, that’s getting all the write-ups in periodicals like The New Yorker and ARTNews. But all the attention in the world isn’t going to make people buy art that decomposes in about three weeks. So, for now, Shapiro will continue to be a freelance film editor, in order to, as he says, “keep the wolf at the door.”

So, how do you top tofu sculpture? Well, Shapiro’s next project is a documentary he just completed shooting with his sister, novelist Laurie Shapiro. It’s about Tobias Schneebaum, an artist and author who was once a cannibal, among other things. Shapiro contracted malaria in Indonesia while working on the film.

But as long as he gets to keep making art, he’ll be happy. Tired, maybe, but happy. It’s funny, he says, “After 20 years of school, you end up picking up s— on the street and hanging out in a tofu plant.”

Holy jewelry catches on like a new mantra

9.19 a.m. ET (1319 GMT) August 26, 1999

By Tracey Middlekauff

NEW YORK — Back in the early ’80s, Madonna revealed that one could exhibit both piety and fashion sense simply by donning a rosary or a crucifix.

Corbis Madonna, behaving ‘Like a Virgin’ ladened with religious paraphernalia

But that’s soo yesterday.

These days, fashion has turned to the East for inspiration, borrowing heavily (or downright stealing) from Buddhist and Hindu faiths.

On the streets of Manhattan, street vendors sell Buddhist prayer beads as bracelets. Styles range from simple wooden beads to stones in a variety of shades, like brightly colored azure or pink. And at $3-$8 a pop, people are snatching them up by the handful. Retail chains have begun to carry them as well: at Steve Madden a prayer bracelet can be had for $12.

You can bet designers are cashing in on the craze. Zoe Metro has designed a line of prayer bracelets for Stella Pace made from semi-precious stones like mother-of-pearl, rose quartz, and hematite; each stone supposedly possesses a property that will benefit the wearer. Rose quartz is for love, hematite will bring happiness, mother of pearl bestows wealth, and green stones bring success.

Breukelyn, a design product store in Brooklyn, N.Y., carries the Stella Pace line, priced at about $25 a bracelet. John Snyder, the store’s owner, says the bracelets have taken off all over the country since early spring. “It’s crazy, these bracelets are so popular now,” Snyder says. “People really believe in them — they want to know what (the bracelet) will do for them, not just the color.”

But do authentic Buddhist prayer beads purport to bring the wearer success, wealth and love?

Not exactly.

Stuart Ramson/AP The Dalai Lama, wearing authentic prayer beads, at a news conference in New York

There are different types of genuine prayer beads— longer strands contain 108 beads, shorter ones have 18, or as little as 9. The 108- and 18-strand beads are used for chanting and praying “na mo a mi to fo,” which roughly translates to “very bright” or “Bring brightness to this world.” Chanting this phrase 108 times constitutes a complete round of prayer.

Sue Yeung, a devout Buddhist, notes that “a lot of Americans are wearing beads as fashion statements. Some are offensive, some aren’t, it depends on the person. But if you just buy (prayer beads) for the hell of it, you might hurt someone’s feelings.”

Two young New York designers, Michele Quan and Robin Renzi of Me & Ro, have created a line of jewelry that, rather than simply copy religious articles, takes inspiration from spiritual items and ideas, resulting in fresh and interesting designs.

One of Me & Ro’s variations on the prayer bracelet features an alternating pattern of silver beads and knotted red cord. The beads are inscribed with the Chinese characters for bone and spirit, which translates to body and soul. This piece retails for $440.

William Tolan/Fox News Online One of Me & Ro’s variations on the prayer bracelet

Another striking piece designed by Quan and Renzi (retailing for $310) is inspired by Hinduism. Silver beads alternate with red stones, reminiscent of rosary beads. The silver beads are inscribed with na ma si va ya, a mantra which means “Adoration to Shiva, the supreme being who resides in us all.”

Other items in the Me & Ro line include flat silver bracelets inscribed with old Indian scriptures, peace disc necklaces, and bone and spirit silver earrings. Michele Quan believes the jewelry “becomes a piece of inspiration.”

As beautiful as Quan and Renzi’s pieces are, practicing Buddhists probably aren’t going to shell out, say, $595 for a silver prayer-bead inspired bracelet.

“Anyone into Buddhism isn’t going to spend $600 for prayer beads,” Sue Yeung said. “They’ll buy it in the temple.”

Breukelyn is located in Brooklyn, NY and can be reached at (718) 246-0024