Meghan Mazella/ The Ithacan ERIKA FOWLER-DECATUR, founder of Art Bars, displays her creation at her office downtown. Behind her is a piece soon to be featured in one of the Art Bars packages.

Imagine unwrapping a bar of hand-blended Swiss chocolate and relishing that first rich bite. And like cereal boxes that used to provide tiny toys as marketing perks, this candy includes trading-card sized artwork not only as an incentive for buying the chocolate, but also to promote local art.

Erika Fowler-Decatur and her husband, Michael Decatur, the creators of Art Bars, moved back to New York in March 2001 from San Francisco in hopes of opening an art gallery in Ithaca.

Fowler-Decatur, originally from Endwell, N.Y., said she soon found that opening a gallery in Ithaca would probably not be a fruitful investment because Ithaca lacks the publicity and population of larger cities.

After some brainstorming, the two came up with the idea of Art Bars in November 2002, and opened their own company called Ithaca Fine Chocolates.

“It seemed natural to combine fine art and fine chocolate,” Fowler-Decatur said.

Fowler-Decatur taught art history in San Francisco and also worked as a director for an Italian-American art museum, The Museo ItaloAmericano. She has a long history as an advocate for children’s art education, including work in Washington, D.C., for the National Endowment for the Arts.

When creating Art Bars, she considered her experiences working with children.

“Chocolate was a natural vehicle for art education,” she said.

But youth don’t just eat the chocolate. Fowler-Decatur also occasionally hand-picks artwork by children from around the world between the ages of 8 and 12 to include with the chocolate package. The pieces come from children living in countries like Belarus, Croatia, Singapore and Kuwait.

Each year, on the last day of July, a panel of six or seven experienced artists looks at about 60 submitted pieces and selects approximately 15 featured artists who will be in the upcoming round.

Fowler-Decatur also includes work by local artists, as well as professors who teach at Ithaca College and Cornell University.

Ray Ghirardo, associate professor of art at Ithaca College, works in correlation with his wife, Megan Roberts, associate professor of television and radio, on art installations that combine sculpture and video.

Their piece, “Rain/Fall,” is a featured art card that shows a shot from a video installation of suspended umbrellas. The installation was shown at an Art Bar exhibition last December.

“Art Bars are a great product,” he said. “[They’re] a very interesting way of promoting the arts.” 

Susan Weisend, also an associate professor of art at Ithaca College and a contributing Art Bar artist, said bringing artists together is a wonderful thing.

“The art community in Ithaca is pretty strong, pretty vital,” she said.

A printmaker by trade, Weisend’s Art Bar piece is titled “Flight Papers,” and uses lithography, silkscreen and photography to create a multi-layered nature scene.

Fowler-Decatur said the goal of Art Bars is to promote local artists and give them more exposure.

“The children’s art is there to give people a glimpse of our future world culture and to encourage them to support art education,” she said.

Part of the proceeds from sales goes to fund art education. Ten percent of all profits go to the International Child Art Foundation in Washington, D.C., and to The Community School of Music and Arts in Ithaca.

Art Bars are now selling in 40 states and are developing international connections. Sales for Art Bars have doubled every month and continue to grow. Ithaca Fine Chocolates is also the first chocolate company in the Unites States to be Fair Trade Certified, which, according to the Art Bars Web site, “fosters self-reliance in small-scale cocoa farmers, which effectively raises their living standards.”

Fowler-Decatur said she wanted the Art Bars to be Fair Trade Certified because it would be senseless to advocate her own causes of supporting artists and art education at the expense of a segment of the world’s population.

She said she wanted a product she could completely stand behind. By promoting fair trade, organic chocolate and recycled packaging, she is able to do this, she said.

Art Bars can be bought locally at several downtown stores including Collegetown Bagels, the Cornell Store, Gimme! Coffee, Greenstar Cooperative Market and the Ithaca Bakery.  

Some of the artwork from around the world is featured on the company’s Web site, www.ithacafinechocolates.com.