Another Year Closer To Death.
As I approached turning 30, I thought it would be funny to have a birthday cake with letter candles that read “ANOTHER YEAR CLOSER TO DEATH”. I thought surely I could order some simple letter candles of the entire alphabet (similar to how banner letters come), but after hours of searching both online and in person, no luck. Eventually I discovered Candlebrate on Etsy, and ordered the exact letters I wanted, in the exact colors I wanted. As usual, I made a crudely photoshopped version of what I was picturing in my head.
Kendall ordered the cake from our local grocery store, got some props at the dollar store, and set up the studio for our shoot. Before we lit the candles, we made sure to get some silly photos with them that we could post on our birthdays.
I was so nervous to light them, because we’d only get one shot at this. It was $70 worth of custom candles, and we were going to be filming the entire duration of lighting them and watching them completely burn out. So I’d have to get photos & video at the same time without bumping the camera, without fixing anything on the candles, nothing. Just light them and let it happen.
One thing I did not expect from the experience was how beautiful the candles would look as they melted. Watching the colors get super saturated as the wax melted, watching them trickle down the letter, and swirl together as they pooled up in the icing, then watching the wax build up until it eventually oozed over the sides.
Another thing I did not expect was how perfectly the process would match the message. We watched the letters melt and ooze like dripping blood as each letter became more and more grotesque until it was an illegible rainbow of candle corpses. By the end it just looked like a coral reef on a sheet cake.
Couldn’t believe my stupid joke was accidentally legit art.
