Food as Art. Art as Food.
Existential thoughts of a hungry artist…
While hungry and cleaning out my near-empty refrigerator today, I was considering the long list of things clamoring for my attention, including a newsletter that was supposed to be about upcoming workshops. I had an epiphany-several actually. As I made my lunch with what random food I could find hiding in the back of the drawers, I was overwhelmed by a flood of metaphors between the experiences surrounding food and art. I made a quick salad and ran out to the studio to write down some of my random thoughts before they were gone. These are just a few.
As many of you know, I LOVE to experience beautiful food. I am excited to taste layers of flavors, am delighted by unique and creative plating, and luxuriate in the ambiance of place and the company that I share it with. I ‘ohh’ and ‘ahh’ and make inappropriate noises as I inhale and close my eyes, often at the embarrassment of my dinner companions. Food is deeply sensuous and impresses on all the senses. ‘Fancy Dinner’ is one of my favorite things, whether as a special celebration or a surprise invitation to an extra seat at the table. These are moments filled with connection, delight and surprise and often become cherished memories. It literally feeds me.
I also love to prepare food to share with those I love and find great comfort in the chopping and sauteing and get excited to combine interesting flavors simply out of curiosity. This process is deeply grounding and makes me feel as if I am creating something fundamentally nurturing and generous that has purpose and life and it should be shared, even if it is only for that single moment. It is an act of love for others and for myself. When the rest of the world is on fire and my own head is in a dark and dreary place and I don’t know what else to do I have two (healthy) choices I lean into; make food or art.
When I make food I follow my instincts instead of a specific recipe. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t look at recipes, but I most certainly do not follow them-even when I try to. I am no chef, but I do have a fundamental understanding of what works well together, which foods and spices compliment each other or add interest and a relative grasp of the proportions of those ingredients. I have experience with how to prepare a food, what temperature, how long and what order to do things in to pull together a delicious and nutritious meal. Sometimes I will keep it super simple and other times I enjoy the challenge of something that takes hours (
even days) to prepare. Years of cooking out of necessity has given me the skills that are now evolved into another creative practice, but is it really that different after all? I have made random connections between the making of art and food in an off-handed way before, but I have never dug deeper and I think that there is a treasure trove of information here to be unpacked, but I can’t write the novel today.
These days I find myself jumping between the studio and the kitchen to both feed myself and others, whether making a meal for friends or teaching a workshop to strangers. I use the best ingredients I can get my hands on, I thoughtfully consider the needs and preferences of my guests and I delight in their shared experience and discovery when they taste something new.
Stay tuned and feel free to shoot me your thoughts and observations between the making of art and food. I will definitely be doing more writing on this topic and including it in my curriculum as I start my winter teaching season this next week.
