SS: So Andrew, tell us about your exhibition please.
Andrew: The Sweetest Thing is an ongoing series of sculptures, videos, photographs and performances about a Santa Clause creature with antlers known as the Santalope. It is a bizarre spectacle, a journey that takes you through different ideas, emotions, locations, and cultures. Just really funky gnarly stuff.

SS: When did you give birth to these Santas?
Andrew: The project started in fall 2006. Since then, I’ve been working on it pretty regularly as I have been able to get money and produce video shoots throughout Europe, all of the united states and two trips to china. I met a lot of artists and collaborated with a lot of people who were not artists, say, strangers who might be walking down the street and sometimes do not even speak English. I got them to wear the costume and videotape them. These new people from all over the place become the source of ideas and influences.

SS: This Santalope character isn’t necessarily you?
Andrew: No, sometimes I don the costume, but I’d like to have as many people from many different backgrounds and ideas slap into their own character and bring their own style to it.

SS: I know you can’t wait to tell us about the golden Santalope.
Andrew: Yes, last fall I was invited to a group exhibition. It was a show of sculptures in a one-off parade through Manhattan. I built the 10’ tall gold Santalope idol, a variation of the sphynx, made from chocolate and candy-wrapped in gold foil. It had big flashing eyes and exhaled smoke. I intend it to be a monument of consumerist, trash culture. The sculpture is covered in almost a ton of duct tape and spray painted gold. Because of the duct tape and the gold spray, the sculpture will never decompose. It will become a piece of monumental trash for a thousand years or more!

SS: Did you get sponsorship for the duct tape?
Andrew: Actually, I did get sponsorship for the duct tape!

SS: What about Eeyore?
Andrew: Oh! And then donkeys! We needed a way to get the parade moving. We decided to have Santalope with this donkey sculpture. It had fake legs on the side. Basically, you step in it and there are suspenders that hold the donkey sculpture around your waist. It, too, had fake Santa legs. When you walk, your legs are the donkey’s front legs. Three of them were walking as if they’re pulling the idol. In reality, there were two people in all gold jumpsuits at the very back of the idols pushing it.

SS: How did it turn into this gingerbread house?
Andrew: The house started originally with the proposed installation called 'He Knows When You’re Sleeping', which is very sweaty and gnarly in a different way. The concept was to build a small house similar in scale to this one. However, it wouldn’t be covered in candies, just a very regular-sized house with a bed inside and two girls sleeping. There’d be a sculpture of the Santalope sitting outside looking into a window - a very perverse voyeuristic take on all of the folklore surrounding the Santa Clause that he knows what you’re doing all the time! [There are other ideas I took into consideration] but visually it wasn’t as compelling and enticing as something we were looking for.

So, we dug deep into what a really visually tactfully intriguing way to present the aesthetics of Christmas and all of this delicious indulgent stuff. What about a giant gingerbread house instead of a little shed with a bed in there like a little shack? Then, I had to find a candy and the sugar and get it going? This is the first time showing the gingerbread house it is exactly 1000 pounds of sugar and lots of candies, all donated! This sugar is mixed with water to create a really thick paste. It covers the entire structure and I attached all the candies with hot glue and drenched every inch of the house with a thick coat of sugar. It’s delicious. You can lick the house if you want.

SS: I’m diabetic and allergic to glue. I’ll pass. What about the inside?
Andrew: The inside is a really raw, crude, lowbrow Santalope ice arctic castle of sorts. There is a performance that accompanied the opening. It was a variation on ‘He Knows When You’re Sleeping’ in a way but a sweeter adaptation to this. There were two performers wearing these Santalope masks and outfits. It was a delicious, fantastic and really trashy performance of Santalope covering each other in thick sugar and licking it off each other. We also had a pole dancer for the opening. The space is open. People are welcome to do whatever they want. They can make out, do pole dancing, or even lick my sugary shack. It’s all about getting sweet and sticky and indulgent.

SS: Will you stick to this theme forever?
Andrew: Forever! Forever and ever! (Long pause) Ah! I hope not. I am not bored of it yet. I am interested in glass blowing, too. The future projects depend on time and money resources to make things happen. At the moment, I have a great time with this project and loads of new ideas for the Santa are jumping out of my head. I also have the video footage and the photographs, which can then later be turned into another installation. But, I won’t do this forever. I just don’t want my obituary to have a picture of a Santa Claus face and that’s how I’m going to be forever, like, that guy!

Andrew Erdos's The Sweetest Thing is showing at Jack the Pelican inWilliamsburg, Brooklyn until October 11th, 2009.