Rubber Chicken: Masters in Sandwich Art

Just 18 months after receiving her Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) degree from Franklin University (FU), Cheryl Hilbert has found work in her field, taking an apprentice-level sandwich artist position at Subway, Inc.

“Many of my classmates had to accept jobs outside of the art world,” Hilbert said. “But I trained to be an artist, and nothing was going to stop me from following my dreams.”

Hilbert’s parents told reporters they were relieved to see their daughter use her degree to land a position within her chosen field.

“We have always supported and never discouraged Cheryl, so when she told us she wanted to get a M.F.A., I said I had the flu, hid in my bedroom and cried for days,” said Hilbert’s mother Victoria. “I couldn’t let her know how big of a mistake I thought she was making.” 

Roger Hilbert, Cheryl’s father, said he was overjoyed with his daughter’s decision until he found out that M.F.A. did not stand for “Master of Finance and Accounting.”

“I thought it was like a M.B.A.,” he said. “By the time I discovered what it actually was, it was too late to tell her how I really felt.”

Now, the Hilberts laugh at their own lack of faith in Cheryl’s artistic abilities. They both agree that had they tried to talk her out of the M.F.A. program at FU, the Subway opportunity might have never become an option.

Only a week into her new job as a sandwich artist, Hilbert is already making an impression on her boss and her coworkers.

“Cheryl really puts a lot of effort into making each sandwich a personal expression of her creative self,” said Subway assistant manager Brian Epps, who began working at Subway after he finished his G.E.D. “Unfortunately, she needs to learn that during the lunch and dinner rushes sometimes you just need to slop it together and send it down the line.”

While her fellow sandwich artists include several recipients of undergraduate B.A. degrees in music, creative writing, art, film, and philosophy, Hilbert feels that as the only M.F.A. on staff she has a unique opportunity to share her advanced knowledge with her coworkers.

“She is always going on about how German expressionism can be applied to the sandwich making process,” said sandwich artist Evan Arlen, who found a creative use for his B.A. in music composition when he couldn’t afford toilet paper in the winter of ’07. 

Constantly on the watch for new trends in art, Hilbert says she is already thinking of ways to revolutionize the craft of sandwich art.

“I’m working on a postmodern meatball sub with no limiting formal boundaries, i.e. no bread,” she said, “and also a minimalist concept piece for people trying to lose weight: lettuce and light dressing wrapped in the sandwich paper.”

Hilbert admits that while she is enjoying the challenge of applying her education to real world art issues, she does miss the theoretically creative environment she had in graduate school, where a handful of her male professors drank wine with her until the late hours of the night, listening like adoring puppy dogs to her ideas about “aesthetic dualities” and her post-structuralist interpretation of 19th century sculpture.

“Sometimes my coworkers look at me like I’m wasting their time,” she said. “Now I know what it must be like to be a guy or an ugly girl in grad school.”

Comments

1

1 year, 6 months ago Lukas Brandon said

laughing out loud, this is the best Rubber Chicken so far, keep ‘em coming!

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