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Risa Hirai is a Japanese artist who paints detailed images of bonsai trees and Japanese meals. But instead of using paint on a canvas, she works with icing on a cookie.

The 23-year-old is a senior at Tama Art University in Tokyo, whose mouthwatering works will be exhibited at Gallery Tokyo Humanite all this week. Assistant director Maie Tsukuda tells The Salt it's the gallery's first cookie exhibit and notes that it's not an ordinary medium for artists.

"I started making these cookies as presents to my friends," Hirai told The Salt via email (Tsukuda helped translate). "I had painted in oils until then, but I became so into making cookies and began to think that this could be a form of expression as art."

Hirai paints various things like animals, flowers and jewelry, but because she's especially interested in juxtaposing "Japanese style" motifs on a Western material (cookies), many bonsai, sushi, Daruma dolls and a one-pot meal called sukiyaki.

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On unanticipated effects on the health of genetically modified animals

"This work, by definition, is experimental, and no matter how well you think it out you never know quite what the resulting animal might be like, what its health might be like. There's a pretty good example of that from a few decades ago. It's called the Beltsville Pig, and scientists were trying to create a pig that was leaner and that grew faster and that required less feed. (The idea was to raise these pigs for pork.) So their solution was to put the Human Growth Hormone gene in all these pigs and, in some ways, it worked. The pigs did grow faster. They did require less feed.

"But, from an animal welfare perspective, it was disastrous and I don't think scientists really saw it coming. The pigs had ... basically every medical problem you can have: metabolic disorders, arthritis, eye problems. They were just miserable. And so that's a real concern but ... not all modifications will be bad for animal welfare. As it happens, these goats [with genetically modified milk] have elevated levels of an anti-biotic compound in their milk and early studies from the scientists that created them indicated that the goats are actually healthier than other goats because their milk essentially protects them from udder infections that can be common in farm animals. So it can really go both ways."

On the prospect of raising animals for their organs

"Scientists used to focus on the potential for transplanting ape organs into humans. The idea was that apes were very similar to us so that should work, but that idea has sort of become taboo, especially as we learn more about how cognitively sophisticated apes are. So, scientists are now really focused on pigs, largely because their organs are about the same size as human organs and there are already some very successful procedures being done. It's somewhat common now to receive a valve from a pig heart in certain heart operations. But scientists really want to be able to transplant whole organs, not just a heart valve from a pig but, say, a whole pig heart into humans. There's a huge shortage of organ donors worldwide, so scientists just imagine that if you could have these pig farms that are just growing organs constantly it might save a lot of lives. The problem is ... rejection. It just shows the potential of if we can re-engineer an animal's body, we could potentially engineer it so that it creates these perfect replacement parts for humans."

“ Emotionally and instinctively there's something that seems very distasteful about engineering animals only so we can take them apart and make our own lives better but, as soon as I have that thought, I think about the fact that I'm not a vegetarian. So, logically, it seems more defensible to me to have pig farms for organ transplants than it does to have pig farms for pork.

I've always felt it's no coincidence that some basketball powerhouses — let us say, off the top of my head, Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and Indiana — get a few better players because those hoops museums don't do very well with football.

I mean, if I were a big-deal high school recruit, I might very well say to myself, "You know, I'd rather be a Hoosier or a Wildcat or a Jayhawk than I would go someplace where I'm just gonna be a lounge act for the glamorous Mr. Touchdowns."

No, I'm not suggesting that cagey old Coach K whispers to prospects, "Hey, be a Dookie, Son, and get all the glory, 'cause our football team is dog meat." But, year in and year out, there must be just enough public relations-savvy blue-chippers who realize they've got a better chance of being a hero at a place where the football players are regularly unpopular losers.

And as this spirit moves us, so too is a powerful Roman Catholic leadership group stepping forward, heading in a bold new direction. Of course, as Dick Vitale might say, "I'm not talking about the Vatican, babee." No, this is the so-called "Catholic Seven" — and if that gives off a hint of martyrdom, well, just so.

The seven are colleges: DePaul, Georgetown, Marquette, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, Villanova — who, you see, have been discriminated against. That's because they're the outcast members of the Big East Conference who do not play big-time football.

When the Big East was created, it was absolutely basketball first, but the league was seduced by football money, and basketball atrophied. Now the Catholic Seven want to get out of the Big (football) East and once again make basketball the one blessed athletic faith.

This new league will probably expand, too, even adding Butler, which would be the token heathen member — proving that while there is only one true path to salvation, anybody can find a way into the NCAA tournament.

This development is a lovely loop back to a time when Roman Catholic schools were pre-eminent in the sport. So many, like the Catholic Seven, had started in urban areas to serve the immigrant faithful, but could not afford to maintain football teams as that sport became too expensive. So, they concentrated on basketball. Seventeen different Catholic colleges have made the Final Four, but only three since the 1980s.

But now, never mind the Catholic Seven. There is white smoke rising over the polls, for little Jesuit Gonzaga University, with less than 5,000 undergraduates, is the new No. 1 in all of college basketball.

Maybe more of those blue-chip high school players will even skip over colleges with merely bad big-time football teams and go star for colleges with no big-time football teams. May the saints be praised.

What comes after awards season? After the Oscars, after the cold of winter begins to lift, after practically every midseason network show is yanked after fewer episodes than you have fingers? What then?

Well, what happens then is vacation, at least around here. I will be gone the week of March 11, resting and taking walks and going to the world's best movie theater and reading books with "Bride" in the title.

Now is the time for breathing. Take care of yourselves until I see you.