Most viewers of Mikaela Liotta’s “Cake Head Man,” a National Silver Medal winning sculpture, find themselves amazed and confused at seeing a droopy-eyed baker with a cake on his head and a tiny cake Bible on his right hand. This sculpture leaves plenty of space for the reader to interpret the meaning.

A student she met at Oxford University’s literature summer camp inspired the hands of this Cake Head Man. Calling herself “a creepy person who notices what people do with their hands,” Liotta recounts how impressed she was when a student from the camp held his hand out while talking as if “he was holding his ideas in it.” Immediately inspired to create someone who holds his ideas, Liotta made her sculpture hold out his cake Bible, which is actually a real recipe book.

In the bigger picture, all these innovative ideas come down to two basic elements, passion and life. “Cake Head Man” portrays her interest in creating enthusiastic, expressive facial emotions. These shocking facial expressions indicate the clash of all kinds of ideas in her mind, including both the “hatred and love” towards books. She calls this magical art style “the sculpture sculpture.”

Although Liotta is now fond of sculpting with books, the relationship between Liotta and reading did not begin amicably. “When I was very little, it was very hard for me to read,” she says. She only wanted to “rip them up and smash them.” As she gradually grew up and learned how to read, she began falling “in love in books” after seeing “where the book can take me” and “how we are related to books.”

This love for literature inspires Liotta to “balance out the hatred and love together to make something beautiful.” With this clash of opposite emotions and ideas in mind, she created wonderful pieces filled with a passion toward books, and of course, sculpture.