Roman and Shogo's Project

Artist statement

Roman Butera and Grant Hayashi June 12, 2023 5:46pm Privacy: Public

During the project, we interviewed Ysabel Aoun. Ysabel Auon is currently a chef at the Fessenden School. She formally owned a restaurant in Newton Center called Elena’s Kitchen. Cooking has been a major part of her life for a very long time. When she was young she would often help her mother cook, and this is when she first learned the basics of cooking. When she was in college she would bake and sell goods to her peers. Finally, some years ago she owned her own restaurant. Now, she is a chef at the Fessenden school. We have the goal to represent that progression in her life through layers of a cake. The cake will be made of laser-cut wood, paper, and cardboard. Each layer would have something different to represent a time in her life regarding baking. On the outside of the cake, there would be Venezuelan flags to show a part of who she is on the exterior. On the inside, there would be either a laser cut or a drawn image to represent her life progression to show who she is on the inside.

Ysabel Layers of Life

Grant Hayashi and Roman Butera June 12, 2023 5:46pm Privacy: Public

Layers of My Life

Bibliography of Ysabel Aoun

Ysabel Aoun is currently a chef at the Fessenden School. Prior to working with the Fessenden School, she co-owned a restaurant in Newton Center named Ellenas Kitchen with her husband (Miguel). Her restaurant was meant to introduce the dishes of her home country of Venezuela but sadly closed down due to the building being bought. Ysabel learned how to cook by watching her mother and helping her in the kitchen. When she was in college she baked sweets and sold them to her peers. In addition, she has a degree in dentistry and she worked as a dentist.

Ysabel was born in Acarigua, Venezuela, near the Andes mountains. Growing up, Ysabel's life was enjoyable with her two sisters and brother. She Would often watch baseball and soccer games, which her older brother took her to. Also, she and her friends would ride around the town on their bikes, going door to door and picking up their friends. In middle school and high school Ysabel played basketball and volleyball recreationally. During her fourth year of high school, she was selected to attend an abroad program in Pennsylvania. She stayed with a girl who she now referred to as her “sister” for six months in that high school, then would come back to Venezuela with her “sister”. After high school, she attended college with a major in dentistry. While in College she began to bake goods, and she also began selling them. Ysabel said that living on her own during college gave her a sense of independence because she was cooking her own food, making her own money, and paying for her own things. She graduated and worked as a dentist for 12 years but then got married and came to the States. Originally, they planned on only staying for a couple of years but they ended up staying for the past 25 years.

In these recent years, Ysabel has had a restaurant in newton center, but sadly, someone bought the building. Ysabel still needed work after this and she wanted to have some time for breaks so her husband recommended to work at a school. So after she looked online she found the Fessenden school.

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Present

Our project idea is to make a decorative cake that shows the different parts of Ysabel Auon's life. The attached files are the other sketches we are not doing.