Orange in Whitehall: Shelves at Warner Glass
Margaret Walker(1915-2015) Centenary: Wonder of the Book
Margaret Walker(1915-2015) had her Centennial in 2015. I wrote about her poetry for a previous Margaret Monday, and it was a pleasure to discover that places were planning events for the Centennial. The University of Delaware Library had an exhibit, Margaret Walker: A Centenary, with a cool series of book covers, which you can view online.
I resonate with this quote:
“When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.”
Red Tail Hawk Feather Mosaic
Chef’s Table and Niki Nakayama: A Banquet of Beauty
Previous Orange Tuesday subject Cathy Vaughn mentioned she was watching Chef’s Table on Netflix, and she was blown away by Chef Niki Nakayama. Stratoz and I added Chef’s Table to the queue, and witnessed the artistry of Niki Nakayama’s food, and learned a new word, kaiseki. Kaiseki is a 13 course meal that originated in Buddhist Monasteries of 16th Century Japan. It was an accompaniment to the tea ceremony, and originally vegetarian, but has become a banquet of richness over the years.
Seasonality is a key to kaiseki, and respecting the integrity of the food, letting its nature shine through. These cherry tomatoes from the Lansdale Farmers Market remind me of the season of summer, of sweet yellow-orangeness. Stratoz is inspired by what we buy at the market, and it makes him happy to create with the palette of vegetables we choose.
The staff of n/naka have meetings to go through the reservation list, and look at what people have had in the past, what they like. Niki Nakayama doesn’t serve the same meal twice to someone. She keeps the element of surprise. Kaiseki reminds me of poetic forms, from my days of writing poetry. There is a sequence of cooking techniques, the ordering of raw, steamed, braised or grilled, and sequence of light and heavy, sweet and salty. Playing within this form inspires further creativity.
Watching Niki Nakayama in her kitchen is watching an artist at work in the studio with focus and expressiveness. She closes the rice paper windows of her restaurant n/naka while she is cooking so that she can simply cook and not deal with customers who can’t believe a woman is the chef, and also lets the customers focus on their food. As an introvert, I love the motion of her closing those sliding windows. As a woman, I feel anger that narratives are such rigid implements, like the customer who said her work was “cute” after he found out Nakayama’s gender. As a woman, I feel encouraged by Niki Nakayama’s process of choosing a restaurant that expresses her vision.
Art Deco Spiral Mirror Makes its Way
Our visit to Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton NJ was on the way to deliver the Art Deco mirror to a client. Stratoz had drafted the design and cut out the black stained glass pieces, gluing them to the mirror frame. I then had the mirror in my studio for several months, waiting while I created house number commissions.
Collaborative pieces remind me of jazz improvisation ~ the listening between musicians. What I heard in the smooth black glass, was a desire for silver contrast, for textures and speckling and mottling. The focal point arch at the top spoke in white gold nails ~ offcuts that are considered seconds by the factory, but which had the right shape to fan out.
Our client had cleared a space for the mirror, got the nail ready for hanging, and she showed us the gray violet wall, and the vase of white peacock feathers adjacent, echoing the shape of the white gold. Another conversation begins.
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It was a day of spirals, with two cool ones at the sculpture park.
Wordless Wednesday: Opening a Book of Brillante Glass Tile
Transforming Rolls of Adding Machine Paper into Vibrant Color: Sculpture by Jae Ko
To make her mark she was searching for a material never before used. In grad school she had worked on rice paper, and made installations and books. “I didn’t want to use something you could get in an art supply store. I was experimenting. I would try and try until I could get a conversation going with the material. I would talk with the paper and it would talk back to me.”
That was when she started working with rolls of adding machine paper and cash register tape. She began with small spools, working flat, trying new things. Putting the paper in water, she discovered, expands it and creates new shapes. She added sumi ink to the pool of water, and the results looked like car tires. She was drawing not on paper, but with paper. WHYY Newsworks.
I love what sculptor Jae Ko did next ~ when the amount of water she was using became too much for her studio, she went to the ocean to see what the tides would do with paper. Stratoz and I saw her exhibition at the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton NJ, which will be there until February 7, 2016.
JK 437 Red and Orange was several feet tall, and bursting with ombre. Color gradation is one of my passions in the studio. I found Jae Ko’s use of the tightly wound rolls of adding machine paper resonant with the closet of arcane office supplies I inherited when I took a job as a hospital librarian in the late 1990’s, and admire her transformation that goes beyond the “I should do something with that.” Art as an alchemical process.
Standing with Paolo e Francesca by Beverly Pepper at the Grounds for Sculpture
In 2014, Stratoz took a photo of me standing with the Beverly Pepper Vertical Vantaglio statue in Rochester, and so when I saw this Paolo e Francesca by Beverly Pepper at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ, I asked him for another photo.
I love the arrow implied within the African Black Granite, and the green trees behind filling in the color. This sculpture was part of a retrospective of Pepper’s work at The Grounds for Sculpture in 1999, when she was 75. She’s still making art in 2015. What I aspire to, yes, indeed.
A Nutmeg Outing to the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ
Spiral in both Quilt and Shell
Julie LaRiviere created this quilt is for Roger Beatty, educator at the Cape Cod National Sea Shore, who brought a love of the sea to many children. The nautilus spiral was my first spiral love.
In the Garden of Nutmeg Designs: Black Eyed Susans and Mosaic Bowling Ball
Over at Stratoz: 10 Groundhog Thoughts: Pondering in the Garden of Nutmeg Designs