Harley Langberg Is Playing with His Food (Art) This Halloween

Bridgehampton food art phenom Harley Langberg is continuing to spread his art and influence online, in print and even on TV this year, all while developing and improving his craft, taking his 100% food-based art to new levels of amazing. And with Halloween just days away, we have nearly a full month of seasonally inspired pieces to enjoy, from scary horror to cartoon cute.

In a recent conversation, Langberg, 35, revealed a long list of accomplishments from this year, including new brand partnerships and press opportunities, along with advances in the way he works, but some goals continue to remain elusive, for now.

“There’s been a lot going on this year. Earlier this year, I was in People magazine, and I was interviewed by Al Roker, which was pretty cool, from the Today show,” Langberg says, recalling the last 10 months of exciting steps forward in his food art career, which is his passion when he’s not doing his job as partner in a New York City investment firm or caring for his husband and their nearly 3-year-old daughter, Blake.

“I created a Billie Jean King portrait as a tribute to her 50 years of equal pay at the U.S. Open, and she loved it and reposted it on Instagram, which was very cool,” he continues, adding the image made from mashed potatoes, roasted peppers, tortillas, eggplant, lime, pear, turnip, apple, peach and pasta to the long list of achievements.

“I am going to be in next year’s edition of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and I have an exciting sneaker partnership that I’m working on with a premium sneaker brand, where they partner with artisans, and they contribute to the design of the sneaker. So it’s going to be a food art-focused sneaker with different elements, which is really cool, and that’s going to be coming out in the next 12 to 14 months,” Langberg adds.

Perhaps most thrilling, at least to him, is the addition of truly sculptural pieces to his repertoire, which brings Langberg’s usually two-dimensional pictures made of food into three dimensions.

“I’ve been doing edible furniture living rooms. I’ve done two of those, which are pretty cool,” he says, describing pieces featuring items such as stacked waffles as a coffee table, a carved out grapefruit lounger, a pumpernickel couch with lox blanket, fried egg rug and an inverted mushroom with sprig of herbs stuck in it as a houseplant. The total effect is truly amazing to behold.

Langberg has more than 41,700 followers on his @harleysfood_art Instagram account, where he posts all his creations, but he finds himself especially busy during the Halloween season, which he absolutely loves.

Harley Langberg Halloween Food Art

“Every year for Halloween I always say that I’m going to create the whole month of solely Halloween art,” he explains. “I’ve been a horror movie fan since I was little, so I do a combination every year of the scary pieces and the cute pieces, although I really prefer the scary pieces. I’ve done pretty much almost every scary character: Jigsaw, Pennywise, Samara from The Ring, Ghostface (from Scream), Freddy Krueger — I won’t bore you with all of them.”

And he really has done all the horror icons. But Langberg also creates more adorable Halloween images, like the characters from Pixar’s Coco and the Hocus Pocus ladies, including a recent portrait of Winifred Sanderson (Bette Midler) using orange Cheez-Its for the hair and green cactus pads for her dress. Another truly whimsical piece depicts a full crowd of dogs dressed in costumes, ready to go trick-or-treating (at top of page).

“Then I’ve done Disney villains which I kind of put in the Halloween category. Ursula (from The Little Mermaid), that was a cool one because I used calamari from Citarella in Bridgehampton and sushi rice, and fresh oysters from the Seafood Shop, and those oysters were really good. They were from Montauk,” Langberg says. “I did a 3D depiction of The Ring, which was so scary. My husband came home and he saw it, and he literally screamed. The girl was literally coming out of the TV!”

It’s not at all uncommon for him to use locally sourced foods in the Hamptons. “My favorite pieces are the pieces I create out in the Hamptons,” Langberg says. “I still use the produce from the farm stands and the local markets. And just like all the artists that were inspired by the Hamptons and used the natural light, I still do all that with my photography.”

A visit to Langberg’s website or his social media will reveal his many recent brand deals, press and collaborations, but he’d really like to see his work compiled in a book. So far, however, it hasn’t happened. “I know I have the audience to buy it. I work with the best children’s book publishing agent, and she literally went to every publisher, and they didn’t care about the Today Show, People — nothing. They only cared about one thing, which is so ridiculous … followers.”

Langberg says all the publishers in his experience require authors to have 100,000 social media followers before they’ll even be considered. But that hasn’t stopped him from all the other incredible things happening with his art. So it will have to come later down the road, and for now, it’s more than enough.

Visit harleysfoodart.com or @harleysfood_art on Instagram to see all Harley Langberg’s Halloween-themed creations and much, much more.