Dillard-land Silence

It's going to be a little quiet at dillard57 for the next week or two, my apologies. I just started a new job, plus Somerville Open Studios is (gasp) next week. I'll be back in the swing of things in May, I hope, posting away and pontificating on all kinds of fascinating things, no doubt.

But spring is here and you all are outside enjoying the gorgeous weather and not stuck inside sitting at a computer terminal anyways, right? All except us poor suckers with our 9 to 5 lives. Sigh. Well, the flowers look really pretty on the other side of the glass, far away down the street, in the park where I am not.

Quick update: (sorry, I'm not going to link all the books up to save time, just today)
I finished a mostly silly book: The Reading Group (predictable, fluffy but well intentioned)
An OK book: The Book of Salt (Kinda interesting but a bit hard to follow)
And a perplexingly boring book: Reading Lolita in Tehran (For such an intense topic, the story wasn't terribly compelling)
And I started Herzog by Saul Bellow and couldn't manage to get past chapter three. Not my kinda book I guess.

I had yummy Ethiopian Food at Addis Red Sea with the fabulous Monica. Gosh I love that spongy Ethiopian bread and the whole eating with your hands bit is so much fun. I also highly recommend Zoe's in Somerville on Beacon Street for Szechuan food; I had my first experience with tea smoked duck and I hope it isn't my last as it was fantastic.

I saw a cool movie: Steamboy which is much more accessible and fun than you might think upon first glance (not too many folks I know get really excited about the idea of a Japanese anime film science fiction story set in the 1800s. Unless they dig it and just don't tell me for fear I will laugh. I promise I won't!). It is visually wonderful and the story is cool too.

Of course I've been cooking a lot as always. New recipes including posole, chicken adobo, atole using the blue corn flour I got in NM, and strawberry crepes using egg roll wrappers.

So there, at least a little info. My friends have been so lovely and patient about my crazy life these days, so thanks to all. Things will settle soon. But I hope to see some of you at Open Studios next week!

Show Me Adobe

Adobe Blue Door 

As promised, a little adobe. It is an attractive medium, soft and smooth. Keeps things warm in winter, cool in summer. In need of constant upkeep (it literally melts away over the years), but it can be built with your bare hands. And it really is beautiful.

These photos are from the Taos Pueblo, one of the most famous and oldest in the world. As in 1,000 years old or so, as in a World Heritage Site. (If you're curious about how you get on this list, their criteria are pretty interesting). So this is one serious Pueblo. Native Americans live here as they have for, well, a millenia. That means no electricity or plumbing. Just lots of dust and blue sky and light brown earth walls that are rough but cool to the touch.

The round structure at the left side of the photo is an oven, called a horno. The women use these to bake bread and pies which are sold to the public. Being ... me, I couldn't resist trying out a few. And these pastries were, well, they tasted like something that had been baked in a mud oven. Not terrible, kinda primitive, but also kinda ancient and interesting. I don't think they'll be served at Petsi's Pies (my current standard after my mom's) anytime soon, but, well, if they made pie with apricots 1,000 years ago, I think I can imagine what it tasted like.

The church below was lovely too. The inside had a very colorful, folksy painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe, one of the coolest of the Catholic Marys.

So there you are, a little adobe. Hope you enjoyed my little Santa Fe trip report! I'll likely be selling prints of these and other Santa Fe photos at this year's Somerville Open Studios. I'd love to see you there!


Taos Pueblo Church 

Chile Chocolate: A Very Good Idea

Really good stuff 

Anyone who has seen the sweet little movie, Chocolat, knows the secret of combining the heat of a chili with the earthiness of chocolate. The sweetness followed by a fiery flare at the end is a very fun little gustatory trip. And New Mexico, of course, being known for its chile, would have to use it whenever possible. However, a store called Chocolatesmith on 2nd Street in town definitely had it figured out. Their chocolates were so good they deserved a blog entry.

My favorite was the pistachio chile bark (on the right in the photo). Salty nuts, bittersweet chocolate and then that zing. Wow. That's a lot of territory in one mouthful. Second favorite was the pinon caramels. Pine nuts with their odd, piney flavor wouldn't be the first thing you'd think to combine with a salty carmel and chocolate, but it all worked just fine. They also sold these fun chocolate pates, encased in wax. Supposedly you could keep them for months in your car or backpack without their melting. You know, for chocolate emergencies. Well, OK, but who is going to manage to keep it around long enough for an emergency, may I ask?

Truly I do not normally wax so rhapsodic over an everyday chocolate shop. This place was great. So now I just have to figure out how to get some of those chocolates out to New England. I may have to have a little chat with the folks at UPS.

New Mexican Food: The Rant

Now This is New Mexican 

I love Mexican food. I LOVE Mexican food. I'm not referring to Chi-chi's or Taco Bell. Oh no. Pretty much I love Mexican food you can only get in Mexico or US states close to Mexico. Food you can't get in Boston. So most of the time, there is a small hole in my life, a missing piece in my daily food intake that if I lived elsewhere, would be taken up with sopes, sopas, carnitas, tortas and lots of proper salsa. There are a few decent places I can go when desperate (the best, imho, being Tacos Lupita in Porter Square.) But mostly I just suffer quietly, waiting for my next opportunity to find culinary bliss.

So when I make a plan to go to New Mexico, there is definitely a plan for eating this kind of food. And I've heard of this "New Mexican" food concept, extolled by many tour books. Ohhh the red chile or the green chile or the mixed red and green, called Christmas. Oohh, sopapillas. So I was eager to see what this was all about. I went there and ate them. I ate red, I ate green. I ate sopapillas. It was good. Red chile was especially interesting. Kindof bitter and fiery. But you know what, real Mexican is still better.

I'm not sure if I completely determined the difference between NM food and Mexican. New Mexican seems milder than Mexican, more beany and ricey. Although in some ways it is spicier than Mexican. Mexican food is not generally that spicy unless you are eating peppers, whereas this NM chile thing can be pretty hot.

Anyhow, one of my favorite places in town was Pepe's, above. That's my other theory, still upheld. The best Mexican food is the cheapest hole in the wall. Fancy Mexican (or NMexican) is kinda just expensive blandified Mexican. This was true in Mexico as well. Not sure why or maybe I just haven't gone to the right places yet.


Blessed Tamales 

These are proper tamales (dulce) from a Mexican place in Santa Fe (not New Mexican). They were fragrant and wonderful and one dollar a piece. Perfect in every way. Alicia's Tortilleria off Cerillos. It helps to speak Spanish to go there. Thanks, Chowhound for the tip! I also bought a dozen tortillas there (also one dollar), still so warm and fragrant it was all you could do not to just wrap your face in them and go to sleep.

Every proper New Mexican meal supposedly includes sopapillas. I think this is a very good idea. They end up being dessert, because you spread honey on them and they are very good and fattening and fragrant and like a big donut of love. Thus ends my New Mexican culinary sojourn. For now. I still have to tell you about Chocolatesmith.


Sopapillas 

Folk Art Makes Me Happy

My Kinda Wagon Wheel 

One of the first stops on my trip to New Mexico was Tinkertown, on the way from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. It's a whole building outfitted with miniature mechanized displays as well as random sculpture and overall bottle encrustation. Just my cup of tea! The motto of the place was, "I did all this while you were watching TV." It was a wonderful place to visit, although a bit poignant as the artist, Ross Ward, died just a few years ago from Alzheimer's at only 57. I met his widow (who ran the gift shop), who felt like the place was a way of keeping him alive.


Antlers 

The antlers above were in a box in a mining museum in the town of Cerillos, just outside of Santa Fe. You could definitely imagine tumbleweeds blowing through this town. It was quiet and empty and a little bit eerie. But the antlers were fun and very O'Keeffey.

Speaking of O'K, I visited her winter home in Abiquiu, as well as the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. There is nothing like seeing an artist's work in the context of where she painted it. After seeing the terrain, You gain an insight and an understanding you would never have otherwise. I remember a tour in Arles of sites where VanGogh painted. All those works that seemed so swirly and abstract suddenly made sense -- they looked exactly like the countryside.

The Museum of International Folk Art was one of the best museums I've ever seen. Worth the trip in itself. Every room was crammed full of the stuff you find in nooks and crannies around the world, art that people make out of what is right there in front of them, as they are living their lives and playing around with their world. An exhibit on Carnaval, the party before Lent, and its manifestations around the world was especially cool; I really enjoyed all the costumes and music styles that each country developed.

The best part of the museum visit, however, was a tour I accidentally joined. I thought it was the 2 PM docent tour of the museum, so I gathered with a clump of people at 2 PM. The tour guide, Dr. Nunn, was one of the curators and said she was going to do a very casual, behind the scenes tour. I thought, wow, they are so laid back here in New Mexico. Turns out this was a special, anthropological tour which was part of a conference in town that week. I only realized this when I saw everyone else had special name tags around their necks when we were already downstairs in a storage room. No one seemed to be offended at my presence, so I hung around until the end when they were going to have a collective chat about the postmodern implications of anthropological whisker-growing or something like that (ha ha). But I got to meet two local folk artists, Arturo Lopez and Arlene Cisneros who explained their pieces in the museum as we asked dorky questions like, "What is that weird thing that Mary is holding in your sculpture?" The answer: scapulars. Oh. How often do you get to ask an artist in a museum stupid questions like that?

Thus concludes the end of this portion of our cultural tour of Santa Fe. I know I promised adobe but I don't have those photos yet. Hang in there.

Crazy Life but Good

Sorry for the lack of posts in the last week or two. Lots of things came flying at me all at once, and then I went on vacation! I was going to write the "watch this space" note before I left, but instead I did what I could to keep my head above water before leaving for Santa Fe, and the poor little blog got neglected.

So I'm promising lots of cool new photos, in-depth art-world analysis, and thoughtful ponderings about New Mexican style food. Really! I promise. It was a good trip. I took my REAL camera there, so I don't have much digital to share except for stealth food shots (I always feel like a dork taking a picture of my plate). I'll get my real camera photos back on Wednesday so I can start sharing then (from the cds). Prepare for the sight of a LOT of adobe. More adobe than you knew was possible.

Three Births in Two Weeks Equals Tired Doula

I'm a little better today, but yesterday I was shredded. Down for the count. You know that expression, "so tired you can't see straight"? That was me, literally. When I tried to focus, my eyes just didn't know what to do.

I've never experienced this before. Do most people know this feeling, and I'm just being introduced? I mean, I've done international travel where you don't get much sleep and you are jetlagged, but you do kinda sleep on the plane usually. I woke up at 7:00 AM on Tuesday and didn't go back to sleep until 10:00 PM on Wednesday night. So that's 39 hours awake. Wow.

Unsurprisingly, I'm really stupid on so little sleep. Decisions are really difficult. I remember taking a long time figuring out if I wanted to turn on a light switch or open the windowshades. What to do, what to do? I stood there for several minutes, trying to decide. Operating heavy machinery (like a car) or doing any sort of detailed task (like the lab work I have to do after the birth) becomes really complicated. Interacting with other people becomes a bit precarious. I take a long time to formulate a sentence and often it comes out wrong. I tell odd, pointless stories that seemed relevant when I started. People make a remark to me, and I simply have no idea what to say in return so I stay silent and hope they will help. I forget what I was thinking about that seemed strongly compelling thirty seconds previously. Well, OK, maybe I'm not all that different when I lack sleep. Ha ha. Very funny.

You know, it was worth it. I definitely learned lots and experienced some intense stuff. First time I've heard a mom literally scream in pain. First time I've gotten to see the doctor say to mom, "Reach down and bring up your baby!" just as he emerged from the womb and there he is, in Mom's hands. Such amazing families and so much love between these moms and dads. Whew.

I'm still tired. I am still missing six hours of sleep -- where do they go? How do I get them back? But I'm glad I could be the doula. Just maybe a few weeks off to catch up on my sleep (and my life) would be nice.

Guess what: tomorrow I'm first on the call list. Whimper.

What People Did Before Television

Ukranian Easter Egg Attempts 

I saw an ad the other day for a television station, which said simply, "Hobbies Shnobbies," followed by the television station. The implication being, why do a hobby when you can watch tv? I know it is a joke, but it made me kinda mad/sad. I wonder sometimes what humanity has lost since people have television rather than empty time with which to fill with hobbies or art or neighbors or sleep or whatever. Okay, that's as much of a soapbox I'm going to get on there. You've heard it all before.

Speaking of such, I was invited to go to a friend's place and make Ukranian style Easter Eggs, which means instead of using the Paas Easter egg kit, you draw on the egg with a stylus and wax and dip it a million different times in different colors. It was tricky because you have to think backwards, but it was very fun. My eggs aren't anything close to art, but they are festive. It's time consuming, mostly useless but very pretty!

And I finally managed to encourage this little paperwhite bulb to start growing. I check on it like a thousand times a day to see if it has changed.

Happy Easter!


Spring Tentatively Arriving in Boston 

Found Art

Encrusted Barometer c2005 

I'm entering an art show using "found objects" at the Somerville Museum. Above is one of my entries -- a barometer I found on the streets of Somerville, which I then encrusted with lots of flotsam and jetsam such as buttons and seashells and toys. I've always been fascinated by the way time changes an object, the scars and various accumulations that are picked up over the years, not unlike our very own inner selves. I also really like the symbolism of a barometer or a compass. A friend once counseled me to make sure I stay in touch with my inner compass and barometer and that way of thinking about life has really resonated with me.

Oooh. We get deep here on the blog when we talk about art, don't we?

I think this may be the first time I have beene willing to post a photo of my art (other than photos of course), so, well, there it is. I think I'm most shy about my paintings, so none of those yet. I'm fond of this particular piece, and the compass/barometer theme has shown up in some of my drawings and paintings as well.

The show requested that along with artwork, we include a photo of some "found art" that we haven't turned into something else. I'm not sure if a lamp like this counts as art, but wow, what a find. Lamps with dangly things are the best. Especially as it goes so well with the wallpaper! Can you believe someone was throwing this away? I know, I know, it's hard to believe.


From My Friend Debris 

Boiled Supper is Good

Home Corned Beef 

Success! The corned beef was a big hit. It was tender and salty and spicy and everyone was happy to eat four kinds of root vegetables (the yellow ones in the photo are the rutabega). The Irish Soda Bread was soft and salty and sweet and fragrant, and the conversation (while not in anything resembling a brogue) was fun and as warming as the food. I think I like this whole having people over for dinner thing!

The burning question: was home corned beef better than store cured? Well ... I guess I would say yeah. I wouldn't say "heck yeah!", because frankly, the difference was pretty subtle. It was more beefy than regular corned beef, and certainly less chemically oriented, I am sure. It isn't necessarily cheaper; it probably was about the same price. It was fun to try a new approach, but I wouldn't be ashamed to buy store cured in the future. Who knows. It isn't like I'm planning on consuming corned beef on a regular basis anyway. As for rutabega, now that was a big hit! Everyone took seconds! If you can buy stock in rutabega, now is your big chance, as it is sure to become the hippest new vegetable around any day now. I jest, of course, but it really is better than its obscurity would lead you to believe.

Another St. Patrick's Day come and gone. Now I have to start thinking about Easter. Oooh hot cross buns. Ooooh chocolate eggs.


Irish Soda Bread 

Insert Appropriately Corny Title Here

Raw Meat in Plastic Bag (Corning) 

Because I enjoy trying out recipes for things you wouldn't expect you could make at home (cheese, graham crackers, tortillas, etc.), of course I also had to try corning my own beef for St. Patrick's Day. Friends may call this making life more complicated (why make graham crackers when you can buy them? they say, throwing up their hands in exasperation), but I call it fun. Research. A kind of science, if you will.

My blogdaughter Susan was enthusiastic about this idea, bless her heart. And she brought up the question that has left us all stumped for so long: what is the difference between corned beef and pastrami? I promised to do a little research and post the answer here. Very basically, the answer is that the two start the same (corning means to preserve with salt, which used to be shaped like little corns), but pastrami is also smoked and then steamed. So there you are! More knowledgeable than you were, just moments ago.

The above photo is what it looks like while corning, which is not the most thrilling photo ever but it gives you an idea of how easy this is. Rub it in the salt stuff, put in plastic bag, stow in fridge. Ta dah!

So the home cured beef is now simmering away in the crockpot. Two friends who agreed to be guinea pigs for this experiment are coming over to help me eat it. The Irish Soda Bread is cooling on the kitchen counter. And the enormous variety of root vegetables are waiting to be boiled with the beef this evening. I couldn't stop myself at the store; I bought carrots, cabbage, parsnips, boiling onions, turnips and best of all, rutabega!!! When the cashier at the grocery store picked it up, she asked me what it was. I said "Rutabega." She said, "What?" And stared at me like I had just spoken in Mandarin. Ah, kids these days. They just don't know their root vegetables. No wonder things are going downhill.


The Elusive Rutabega 

Anyhow, I'll post the photos tomorrow from the dinner tonight. I'll be curious to see how the flavor of home corned beef is different from the store corned, which Cooks Illustrated dismisses as inedible. Time will tell ...

Signs of Humanity/Signs of Spring

When Irish Ducks are Smiling 

You know, humans are a funny species. When you live in a city, this becomes more apparent than elsewhere. You're wandering around, doing your thing, and in the middle of a sidewalk, someone has built a snowman. Or drawn a picture in chalk. Or built a little shrine out of toothpicks to their favorite frog. People just make stuff like that and set it out. I suppose it makes them happy. It isn't useful, it is often a bit odd, but you know, it's pretty cool. I believe it makes the world a better place.

Every day I pass the famous Make Way for Ducklings Duck statue in the Boston Public Garden. It's a fun statue. It isn't particularly challenging or revolutionary, but it is a beloved landmark in town of a beloved book. And kids are always clambering all over it since it is kid-sized, which is fun to watch. Occasionally, one of the ducks disappears to who knows where. Lately, someone has taken it upon themselves to clothe the ducks in festive hats, as seen in this photo that I took this morning on my way to work. Well. There you are. Just in time for St. Patrick's Day.

Another sign that spring really truly is only a week away (oh please oh please), is that the ducks that hang out at the pond have an increasingly larger hole in the ice, as seen in this photo. I'm sure they are pleased.


Public Garden Thaw 

The next sign of spring? The reappearance of the lovely swanboats and then the Ducktours along with the tourists on the streets of Boston. It won't be long now.

A Winter Breather

New England Skiing 

I love living in the city and rarely do I feel the need to drop everything and escape. But when a group of friends decided to do a weekend in the "boyfriend's family's NH cabin", I was happy to go. I've noticed when I do leave Boston for one of these excursions, there is this feeling of lightening, of ahhhh, new perspective, etc., even though I hadn't been feeling particularly rundown. So it was good to get away. We did a little skiing, both cross country and downhill. The picture is from the top of one of Attitash Mountain's little baby hills. I love to ski, but no one would ever accuse me of being a daredevil. I thought I was tough because I could handle all of the, um, green circle trails at, um, Wachusett Mountain in MA. Well, I wasn't fully prepared for the New Hampshire definition of green, which of course would make any seasoned skiier snort, but made me a little weak in the knees. But I conquered that mountain! I showed her my stuff! I skiied all the way down without falling at all! So here's a photo of me in my ski gear and eighteen layers of clothing along with Bess, new snowboarder extraordinaire.


We Think We're Tough But We Fool No One 

And we did a lot of cooking and eating in that not-very-rustic-at-all cabin. We decided to buy a ton of groceries and cook together. I made Cooks Illustrated Quick Recipe cinnamon rolls, which made me a very popular person on Saturday morning. I wouldn't say they were easy as pie, but everyone was so excited that it made it worthwhile. Our Saturday night dinner with flourless chocolate cake was particular spectacular, followed by a fierce game of trival pursuit.


Quick Cinnamon Rolls 

Yup, I recommend the winter getaway thing for sure. Except now I need some sun. Hm.

Literary Canada

I just finished The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I know, I know, that is so last year, etc. But I just had never gotten around to it. A book about an Indian kid surviving on the high seas with a tiger? It just didn't grab me at first. But, as promised, it was good! Much more fun and funny and quirky than I expected. It is a much bigger book than you would think. Lots of stuff around religion and er, lifeboats and um, zoos and stuff. Gosh, it is hard to make this book sound good when I try and describe it after just finishing it last night, which is possibly why you have never read it either. Well, just believe me. That's all I can say.

In the book, Pi ends up in Canada, which is where Yann Martel is from. This made me ponder the state of literary Canada, as it seems like I have been reading a lot of fiction from up there lately. Maybe it's the winter weather.

For example, I also recently finished The Diviners by Margaret Laurence, which was a wonderful, darkish story. I guess she was one of those authors kids were forced to read in high school, but I'd never bumped into her before. I think she's a bigger deal in Canada, considering that my local (albeit tiny) library has exactly zero of her books. I'm kinda impressed by all these Canadian women authors and their finesse with words and the darker side of the human heart: Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Ann-Marie MacDonald, Carol Shields. It's probably stupid to lump them all together like being from or living in Canada makes you somehow a different writer than being from Florida, and these women would probably grumble upon seeing this here. But I have to say, every single one of these authors has consistently produced work that has moved me deeply, and I just don't have as big of a list like that from other countries, including my own. Odd. Coincidence? Something in the water up there? I just don't know. Any theories out there?

Custard on Everything: Or, A Night for the Anglophiles

Beef Stew (Not Steak and Kidney Pie) 

A friend helped me move this past fall, and I offered to repay him with a home cooked meal. He requested steak and kidney pie, as he is a Brit far away from home. Of course, I was excited at trying out making this new delicacy. Obligingly, I started digging up recipes and learned with growing dread that the kidney part of steak and kidney meant I had to use actual kidneys. At organs, I balked.

After some discussion, we compromised. I made beef stew. Well, it wasn't actually a compromise. I just said, "Forget it, I'm making beef stew." And he was OK with this ultimately. The Brits have learned after many years of working with us Americans that we will do whatever the heck we want anyhow, so they might as well go along for the ride. So I made the Cooks Illustrated Beef Stew with Cinnamon and Cloves, which I think came out pretty well. The non-Brit guests were fine with it, anyhow. I also made steak fries (almost as good as having steak, right?), green salad, and obliging Brit friend offered to bring pudding for dessert.

People in England like puddings, although here they would be called something more like soupey pudding cake. I have no objection to cake topped with pudding at all, and it was even more entertaining to be able to try several types of canned, I mean tinned, puddings that he bought at Cardullo's, a local gourmet shop. I also decided to throw together the "Sticky Toffee Pudding" from the Cooks Illustrated Quick Recipe so we could compare home-made to canned, I mean tinned.

Best of all, Obliging British Friend even brought along a can/tin of Bird's custard powder. You stir this magical elixir into hot milk and voila, you have a batch of warm, gooey pourable pudding/custard which you pour over anything vaguely resembling dessert. It not only disguises any cosmetic flaws in your pudding, it it delicious and soothing. I'm starting to think about the pleasures of custard for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Anyhow, all three puddings disappeared pretty quickly. The tinned ones were good but very sweet. The home-made was also good and of course less chemically tasting. To those of you into food trends, I'd keep an eye on this dessert -- it could be the next molten lava chocolate cake.


Custard Over Everything is Good 

There it is, with photos. Night of the Anglophiles. To top it off, we were going to watch some Monty Python, but we were all too full and sleepy from all that food. As theme dinners go, I think this was pretty successful.

Women's History Month -- Top Ten Favorite

A very cool friend of mine just sent around an email with her favorite women from history on it, and asked us to share our own. It was so much fun to stop and think about the women in my life that I thought I'd put it in the blog. Here is how I responded -- and feel free to add your own to the comments area if you like!

(these are in no particular order)

1. Helen Keller -- I've been fascinated by her since I was a little girl
2. Annie Dillard -- her impact on my life is pretty obvious, um, by checking the name of this blog

2. My personal trinity of North American Expressionist Painters:
Frida Kahlo -- Mexican artist
Georgia O'Keeffe -- American artist
Emily Carr -- Canadian artist

3. Mrs. Erda Gordon, my second grade teacher, the first of so many passionate, imaginative, inspirational female teachers and professors
4. My Aunt Margaret Knorr, family historian, who would have loved the internet and blogging, a woman before her time
5. My Aunt Mary -- the stylish, cool aunt who smothers you with kisses and taught us about style, who then went on to show us how to get through the hard times with grace
6. My grandma, who still makes me laugh and cry, a straight talker and a cook beyond compare
7. My mom, who drove me to art classes all those years, a sweetheart in the truest sense of the word
8. My talented, generous, loving, beautiful female sisters and friends
9. How can I not list my adorable niece who is a light in my life, at 3 years old. She brings such joy to us all with her puppy dog happiness and goofy antics. I can't wait to see what kind of woman she turns out to be.

Gosh I've been blessed by these women.

Artistic Ponderings and Scary Paintings

I'm working on a new painting, no title as yet. I'm so glad to have a new piece with which to play, although it is hard to be patient sometimes and let the whole thing evolve. I want it to be brilliant and perfect and finished right now! Not later! But all I can do is paint what seems right at the time, and then wait for the next part to appear when it is ready.

I wonder sometimes if this is what writing a novel feels like. You have these characters and these worlds that appear in your head. These people that speak to you whom you have never met. And you just wait until they tell you what they need to tell you, and you write it down and hope that it works. As an insatiable reader, I have utmost respect and awe for these storytellers, as this is not my gift. But I think I know what they mean when they say these characters just appear on the page. My paintings feel like that. It is perplexing sometimes. Who put these images in my head? Why are they here? They are really not that much related to my everyday, go to work, go to yoga, come home and eat dinner kind of life.

There isn't a strong connection between what I paint and the kind of person I am. If you saw me on the street, you probably wouldn't think I painted wacky psychedelic paintings. Who is that person in me that does this? Ultimately, I don't think it helps to try and dissect it, to understand why. I think you just have to gratefully and graciously accept it and ride it to where it takes you. Humbling and exhilerating at the same time.

Sometimes after working on a painting for a few days you can't see it anymore. You get too close to it, it has become a part of your vision instead of something separate from you. It becomes necessary to see it fresh in order to see what else needs to be done. To remedy this, sometimes I will look at it upside down, or in a mirror, or take a photo of it, or I will hang it somewhere in my apartment where I don't usually see it. That way I come upon it unexpectedly and then I say, "Oh! Of course! I forgot to add the fireflies!" And I'm off and running again, and all is new. This happens over and over again with the painting until finally I really don't see anything new. It no longer has something demanding my attention. Then I know it is done.

However, there is one small danger to my little repositioning trick. I set out this latest painting on my living room floor so the first thing I would see coming home would be my painting, surprise! A good way to get a fresh perspective on it. Except when you get beeped to the hospital to be a doula, and you have to ask your landlord to come up to your apartment and turn off your crockpot. You've forgotten that you've left the aforementioned painting right there at the door, a kinda scary painting of a woman's naked woman's torso with sea creatures. So when I get home late that night and open the door, I have a fresh perspective of the painting all right, as I think of my landlord seeing this painting. Sigh. The hazards of the painterly life. I'll be a little sheepish next time I hand over my rent check.

Oh and by the way, the Somerville Open Studios website now has this year's artists on it, including, you guessed it, moi.

Winter is for Pudding

Indian Pudding 

Here in New England we're getting snow, snow and more snow. Excellent for winter sports but ultimately not so excellent if you are trying to park your car in a space where people have "claimed" it with garbage cans. So what do you do when you've just parked your car three miles away from home and slogged through the cold, gray slush and your socks are damp and your nose is chilled? You make pudding of course.

Indian pudding makes you feel all connected to the pilgrims so it is especially satisfying to make in the brutal winter. The "Indian" part, I guess, refers to the corn meal and molasses base (and if you do CORE you can make it with splenda and it's fully legit).

I decided to try making tapioca as well. The recent "bubble tea" phenomenon had me pondering recipes with tapioca, something I'd never liked as a kid. The little clear balls always just seemed kinda odd to me, like fish eyes or something. I was pleased with this recipe from Joy of Cooking, but I don't think I've yet gotten over the fish eye aspect of this dessert. Well, now I know. Guess I'll try again in twenty years and see how I like it then.


Tapioca Pudding