Eating & Drawing @ Flying Object.

Hello! Here I am! Still here, yeah. Lots of exciting developments here at EnD. 

First, I had this show! Eating & Drawing heads out of the sketchbook & into the big crazy world. The very excellent food blogger Jono of the brilliant Oil Changes  curated this show of my food watercolors, featuring, of course, DustyRose, at Flying Object, in Hadley, Massachusetts.The opening was last night. It pretty much ruled. I know some amazing people 'round these parts. You know who you are. Much love.

Western Massachusetts people, have you checked out Flying Object? You should, because it is pretty great, & also because MY SHOW IS UP THROUGH MARCH 11th! OMG! You yes you, could enjoy all this fabulous art in person. I know, it's mind blowing. Think on that.

 Ok, so, let's go back a bit, to last December...I was on track, planning my holiday food blogging, looking forward to on catching up on my sketchbook archives...when during a random craigslist browsing session, I found our dream rental (since owning land is still just a dream). Free standing cottage, lots of land & garden space, & I can't even believe this still, it came with a chicken coop & even a chicken! All that stuff we really wanted wrapped up in a neat little package.

Since then, we have somehow acquired three more pullet Rhode Island Reds (one of them laid her first egg Friday, just before I left to hang my show-seemed like a present from Lulu), & more recently 26 (there were 27. Very sadly, we lost one.) of the most adorable baby chicks you ever saw (I know all baby chicks are that adorable. But whatever, mine are cuter).  

We are now reporting to you here at EnD from our new, much more rural headquarters in North Greenfield, Massachusetts. Our nearest neighbor is a dairy farm. I love it. 

Needless to say, the blog has been on hold what with moving & art show & chickens. But I'm happy to be back. I've got some things to say, & some things to draw before my standard summer garden season hiatus.

Looks for chicken paintings soon! If you are in the area, go see the show!

Tabloid Portraits #1: Bret, LiLo & A Shout Out To Magazines.

This post has nothing to do with food. Zero. If you are a dedicated food reader only, go to the archives, or come back later.
I repeat, nothing about cooking here, except in the rather roundabout way where last night I had dinner simmering on the stove & was waiting for Owen to come home from work at the restaurant. 
Note: our kitchen table is currently (frequently) covered in trashy celebrity magazines, thanks both to my lovely co-worker who donates me hers & to my own personal difficulty in resisting the lure of the magazine rack at the 7-11. Also present on the EnD table: ample food magazines & piles of New Yorkers (family lifelong subscription). If you are old fashioned & still enjoy print media, please come on over to our house.
I was having a pleasant time listening to the Silver Jews & drinking wine & messing around in my sketchbook.
As I do, I got to drawing. Normally, I do this with my magazines, but sometimes I like to mix things up. 

"I'm Glad To Be Here/Living In Fear"

 "Wasted Again"

Maybe painting a portrait of Bret Michaels indicates that I have too much time on my hands. IDK. I did grow up in the 80's. I though Poison was pretty great when I was ten.The reality show/stardom thing does confuse me a bit though.
I have been known to fixate on celebrities, if they are the good ones. (I think I summed up what I mean by that here). But my great love of magazines & a print media isn't about that, really. I've always been an old school magazine reading kind of girl. Take that internet! I wish this blog was a zine (yup, I did attend high school in the early 90's.)
Magazines: you can cut them up, you can hang the pictures up on the wall, I find them way easier to draw from than the internet, you can read them in the bath or on the beach or on a boat or any other place you wouldn't bring a laptop, you can write in the margins, you can draw mustaches on people, you can photocopy them & use them for silkscreens, you can make wallpaper... What the hell can you do with an internet page, exactly.
Celebrity news means nothing to me if I can't involve scissors & glue somehow.
That's the collage artist in me, but that's also the reader. Of books with pages. & the general object-loving thrift storing hoarder that I am.
Here's to thanking Christ that we don't live in a completely virtual world yet.
I like it tangible & messy.
(Oh & thanks Amy for the Stars).

Piles Of Noodles, PIles Of Opinions.

Welcome to my controversial world of noodles. Linguine, fettuccine, elbow macaroni, whatvever, noodles have also been one of my favorite things to draw. Long long long before I had a food blog I was painting piles of noodles everywhere. For example, this classic painting of mine: 

"219", Acrylic on canvas, 2005

So, visually,  I am all about the noodles. Gastronomically, they are actually not my first go to comfort food, or at the least not the classic Italian style pasta variety. I am a chickpea curry girl all the way, or spicy beef & soba. Milkshakes & onion rings, I'm all over that. I believe I have mentioned my opinion on the general American trend of paying way too much money for a large plate of crappy pasta, & eating it in a mall, probably. Why not eat cheap food with some complexity & flavor, a bowl of pho or steamed pork bun? & We all know my Grampa Diamond's strong opinions on red sauce.  I guess it's a family thing. 

That said, there is more to do with a box of fettuccine than dump some jar of sauce from the grocery store over it .  

2.10.10: Homemade Red Sauce, With Bacon, Chicken, & Veggies. 

 3.2.10: Angel Hair, In White Wine & Butter, With Summer Squash, Thyme & Mushrooms. 

I guess behind my ranting & raving ala Anthony Bourdain about the Olive Garden (we actually saw him do this that night) is that both these meals weren't particularly creative, didn't cost much money, hardly took any real time or effort & were delicious. Learn to cook your own food, rather than throwing away money on crappy American chain restaurants, please. Seriously, learn to cook, y'all, at least enough to cook some veggies in butter & olive oil, chop some garlic & onions, & boil water.
This is the lesson in the noodles.
(It is still very much winter, although it is March, I am therefore apparently still cranky). 

I Tried To Make A Pretty Food Drawing, & This Is What Happened.

I made a truly beautiful, garden greens based dinner last night, & tonight attempted to draw it, in the usual fashion employed on this blog. Somehow, something went wrong. I've been trying to confine my collage side to this sort of thing, but I don't know, maybe forced separation never works. I started drawing *seriously* again because I felt like at DnD I wasn't taken seriously because I just glued shit together, so I started this drawing blog/collage blog nonsense. Of course, in my life as an artist, this is maybe the 300th time I quit collage, tried to draw like a *real* artist, got bored with that, collaged more, decided my collages were stupid, started trying to look like a RISD graduate again. Oh but wait, RISD painters hate the illustrators anyway, so what the fuck am I trying to do? Trying to figure out the conflict between people thinking my drawings of plants are pretty & only being happy gluing scraps of paper together in the midst of a big mess. Why do I care what people think? Because I have a very expensive prestigious art degree & yet work in a grocery check out aisle for crap money? Naturally low self esteem? You tell me.

Is this an art blog, or a food blog anyway? Collage or drawing or watercolour? Or just mine? I really do love to cook, but I was never able to apply myself fully to truly practical tasks, I was born a fine artist.

That's a lot of talk for one picture. So here's how it is.

The Meal: Napa Cabbage Egg Rolls with a sesame chili dipping sauce, Saag Paneer with white basmati rice, served on a bed of green leaf lettuce (spinach, napa cabbage, lettuce all from yesterday's first major garden harvest at our garden).

The Drawing:

"I need freezer space for party/CRACK." 6.8.2010.

I guess my true colours just came out.

Scrabble & Winter Vegetables & Art.

2.3.2010. We have a Scrabble/Art/Soup/Roasted Stuffed Squashes & Other Root Vegetables Party here at 133.

It was sort of an organic collision of my inviting Rin & guest over for a double date dinner party with Owen & I, & Abigail throwing a Soup & Super Scrabble party, at exactly the same time. The food was delicious, the Scrabble game was fierce, Pandora pretended we were at the Basement for some reason, & Rin, Owen, & I (not being the Scrabble types) made some art on the living floor together (while the world's most hilarious books were being read aloud, yet again). Damn, the lessons we learned from the Book Swap are endless. Oh, David Deida, you've given us all so much.

Rin's drawing of Owen & I collaging together.

"Stuffed Squashes/An Inferiority Complex", by me.

"Self Portrait via Show Magazine", by me.

Rin's.

"Soup & Ass", by me.

& Owen's.

(He never glued anything down, but he cut out a lot, so I dumped all the cuttings on the scanner & here's what we have. Pretty freaking awesome. Thanks again, Show Magazine! )

That's the art. Oh, wait, what's this blog called? Oh right, EATING & Drawing. So what did we eat? Well, I was still playing the "work with what you have" game, so mostly this meal was shaped by free stuff from work, but it turned out rather well, in my humble opinion. (Note: this vegan dinner party). I made acorn squashes stuffed with a wild rice blend I made of some pre-mixed blend, wild rice, & short grain brown basmati, crimini mushrooms, spinach, thyme, tofu, onions, & garlic, with a side of rosemary/olive oil roasted sweet potatoes, yukon gold potatoes, & summer squash. Abigail made a soup of (from what I remember from watching) sweet potatoes, chickpeas, watermelon radishes, coconut milk, IDK, it was very good, yay food, we like it. A good combination of things, food creations, games, mixed media, watercolours, drawing, eating, drinking, over the top ridiculous sex/relationship books, trashy music, & friends. & of course, the world's best cat & dog, DustyRose & MelodyRose.

This post is dedicated to the works of David Deida & the ladies of Show Magazine for providing oh so much laughter & inspiration...heart heart heart.