Baking Bonds, 2026

Baking Bonds is a student-faculty summer collaborative research project inspired by the first year of the Faculty-Staff Baking Club at McDaniel College. Rising sophomore Lumen Scholars, Nia Cuencas and Laura Gels, worked with Associate Professor of Art, Chloe Irla, to create an interconnected body of work that applied the Place as Text pedagogical framework to explore how place, seasons, people, and memory influenced what members of the Baking Club baked throughout the academic year. The final deliverable was a limited edition of seven, 132-page books in recipe card format, each contained in a wooden recipe box.

Laura Gels digitally illustrated interpretations of the recipes baked by members of the club. She illustrated the recipe tapestry that was then transformed into an accompanying tea towel.

Nia Cuencas focused on creative writing and narrative research and produced short reflective texts, poetry, and interview-based profiles drawn from three members of the club: Shelley Ensor, Susan Flanders, and Linda Kirkpatrick. Nia’s first work that she shared with us inspired the title of this project.