A Rainbow of Colors for Any Occasion

http://www.special-education-degree.net/food-dyes/

Research for our latest Processed View addresses artificial colors and flavors in the painted dessert of party food. We must ask questions about the chemicals we ingest daily and on special occasions. One source of chemicals are the rainbow of dyes which help define our conception of fun food and party food. 

We have sought out the latest party food technology. You may think we have landed on the Blue Moon? Run the rapids on the Green River? No, we're shopping at Walmart. Happy Holidays!

April Fool's Day - Sad Food Trends

Not much to say about the food trends phenomenon that isn't stated in this April Fool's Day article from First We Feast blog. That it's only the tip of an iceberg. Our own research indicates time-tested winners that will be and have been with us for a long time.

Saturated Fat Foothills : Complicated Terrain

Saturated Fat Foothills from Processed Views: a Survey of the Industrial Landscape

NPR blog THE SALT continually updates the conversation regarding saturated fat in our diets.
Historically, there have been unintended consequences of demonizing foods. Consider the full-fat dairy paradox and the suicide-by-salami debate.

Book Review: Carleton Watkins the Complete Mammoth Photographs

An extensive biographical synopsis of Carleton Watkins and the impact of his work can be found at Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes where he reviews

Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs by Weston Naef and Christine Hult-Lewis 

Watkins got his start as a photographer of commercial real estate. His photographs of Yosemite were enormously impressive when seen on the East coast, prompting the creation of Yosemite as a National Park and motivating Eastern painters such as Bierstadt to seek out a then-little-known Californian.  Creating the sublime view was Watkins’s signature technique:  "implying scale by placing dramatic objects — trees, rocks – in the foreground of his pictures, objects that would print darker than the massive mountains or other landscape elements in the background."

In discussing the origins of the Watkins monograph, Green mentioned collector and digital archivist Steve Heselton who launched careletonwatkins.org, an indispensible online repository with JPEGs of nearly all of Watkins’ known stereoviews. It has certainly been indespensable for our Processed Views project. 

Perhaps in part because he was mostly unaware of dominant Eastern art-making trend Watkins was uninterested in the dewy, often treacly fantasia that suffused 19th-century American painting. Instead, Watkins showed the landscape as it was: Grand and beautiful, but also as a resource that was tapped. Watkins didn’t just show us beautiful views from high places, he showed the land being consumed by prospectors, being blown up and blown through by the railroads, and he showed the natural landscape being replaced by San Francisco and by the sort of massive farms that first made southern California famous. He showed the lumber mills that decimated the Western forests and the mines that tunneled underneath the mountains and the smelters that broke down the found ore. He showed how the wealthiest Westerners, Watkins’s mates in San Francisco’s famed Bohemian Club, lived on their country estates.
Watkins established the Western landscape, the real Western landscape and not the manifest-destiny-driven (or Humboldtian) fantasy of it, as the grand American thing, as the subject with which American art would have to grapple. Watkins’s insistence on showing the land as it was — not just its beauty but also the land as it was used, even defiled by extraction-driven industries such as timber, mining and agriculture — pointed the way toward truth in American art. It was Watkins who pioneered the American realism that gave rise to the crusading honesty of Lewis Hine, Ben Shahn and Dorothea Lange, that led to the more nuanced revelations of the New Topographics photographers and the deadpan forwardness of Ed Ruscha. [Image: Watkins, Cape Horn near Celilo, Columbia River, Oregon, 1867. Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

Other contributors to Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photogrphs include Getty research associate Michael Hargraves, Bancroft Library curator Jack von Euw and Huntington Library curator Jennifer A. Watts.

Additional discussion about Watkins' and photographer Robert Adams' love of trees can be found at http://blogs.artinfo.com/modernartnotes/2011/12/for-the-love-of-trees-watkins-and-adams/ 

Print the Legend of the Western Landscape

In Processed Views, we draw attention to America's changing landscape brought about by industrial farming and food production. We choose to highlight and be guided by the work of 19th c. photographer, Carleton Watkins, photographer of both Yosemite Valley and the mining, lumber and railroad industries.

A peripheral conversation arising from our 19th century mimicry is the evolving nature of all of American landscape photography. In her history of western landscape photography, Print The Legend, Martha Sandweiss illuminates the way photography both stops time, exists in time and it's ability to create myth, legend and identity. 

"During the nineteenth century, photographers and photographic publisher worked hard to transform their intrinsically fragmentary images of the western landscape into complex visual narratives, relying on printed captions and the elaborate sequencing of serial views to created stories of temporal change. But wrenched from these original publications contexts, nineteenth century western photographs are indeed ill-suited to speaking to "progressions" of the "relations between things." They necessarily represent a kind of discontinuous history in which neither the shape nor the cause of change is easily discerned and if they cannot mimic the flow of history, neither can they easily mimic the shape of popular literature, for change is a hallmark of popular literary representations of the nineteenth-century West. The wilderness is subdued, the deserts bloom, heroes grow in moral stature, and more modest narratives of self-improvement play out again and again across the frontier. Photographs can serve such narratives of change and can, indeed , evoke deep-felt memories of such cultural myths. But particularly when wrenched from their original publication contexts, they can rarely depict or explain such change themselves; products of history , they cannot always serve history well. They resemble what Pierre Nora calls Ilieux de memoire, sites of memory: "moments of history torn away from the movement of history, then returned; no longer quite life, not yet death, like shells on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded." Artifacts of the past, they can still evoke the past, but always in negotiated and contingent ways. 

When we read nineteenth-century photographs in history, when we try to reinsert them into the rich economic and cultural world of their production we can indeed learn much about the world from which they come. But, of course, we cannot truly do so without also reading the photograph through history and approaching them with questions and concerns of our own. Photographs are stable objects, but they have unstable meaning. If the meaning and messages of nineteenth-century photographs are constantly shifting and being invented anew, despite all the seeming specificity of their subject matter, the pictures nonetheless remain remarkably rich and useful to all those who would study the national past. For ultimately, their greatest value lies not in the physical information they convey—about the appearance of a place, the shape of an object, the sense, photographs stop time, but they remain paradoxically dynamic artifacts.” p. 342

 

The Meat Racket and In Meat We Trust

The finale photograph of Processed Views is looming --  inspired, in part, by two recent investigations of the meat production and packing industry.
Investigative reporter, Christopher Leonard, delivers an account of  the evolution of the nations's meat supply over the past thirty years. In The Meat Racket, Leonard covers how meat production conglomerates have created a system that puts farmers on the edge of bankruptcy, charges high prices to consumers, and returns the industry to the shape it had in the 1900s before the meat monopolists were broken up. Numerous interviews have revealed the extend to the political power of this industry that is contributing to the demise of  America's family farm culture.

Review of The Meat Racket: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/book-review-the-meat-racket-by-christopher-leonard/2014/02/28/3000c400-934c-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

Maureen Ogle provides  historical perspective to this industry in her book “In Meat We Trust.”  Tracing the history, she profiles the technological developments, as well as personalities that built the industry. She lay much blame, on the American consumer who remains uninformed about the process and consequences of their diet. The "meat problem is really one of culture, of politics and, above all, of identity." 

It is about time, Upton Sinclair would be gratified.

Edible Masterpieces

A delicious fusion of art and consumption...

 

Art fund raises money for museums with edible masterpieces

(above) photograph by maja smend; food styling by kim morphew; prop styling by lydia brun from DesignBoom


The art fund has kicked off a fundraising initiative that encourages art lovers and creatives to make edible masterpieces, with all money raised going towards the support of hundreds of UK museums and galleries. the philanthropic bake-off asks entrants to create food-based works of art, with recommended recipes including a mondrian-inspired battenberg, a jackson pollock themed marshmallow treat and a glittering cake mimicking the familiar diamond-encrusted damien hirst skull. campaign co-ordinator katharine richards explains, ‘we’re hoping to inspire people, through the medium of food, to raise money for our national museums and galleries. what could be more fun than recreating your favorite work of art out of simple ingredients you have in your fridge – which you can then eat!’ 


‘jackson pollock – autumn rhythm (no. 30)’
photograph by maja smend; food styling by kim morphew; prop styling by lydia brun; recipe by georgia levy

‘jackson pollock – autumn rhythm (no. 30)’
photograph by maja smend; food styling by kim morphew; prop styling by lydia brun; recipe by georgia levy


mondrian-inspired battenberg
photo by maja smend; food styling by kim morphew; prop styling by lydia brun; recipe by georgia levy

van gogh-inspired ploughman’s
photo by maja smend; food styling by kim morphew; prop styling by lydia brun; recipe by georgia levy


wedgwood-inspired shortbread
photo by maja smend; food styling by kim morphew; prop styling by lydia brun; recipe by georgia levy

Hamburgers Destroy the Landscape

Complicated, but clear illustration of the impact of industrial agriculture appeared in the Huffington Post, via Peta.  Americans really eat three hamburgers every week?.....Boring!

Feature Shoot and Junk Food

Fruit Loops Landscape was chosen to be a part of the Feature Shoot Junk Food exhibition! Curated by Emily Shormick, photo editor of The Cut at New York Magazine, we are thrilled to be part of this online exhibition.

Fruit Loops Landscape from Processed Views

Searching for food landscapes on Feature Shoot's website yields wonderful work by other photographers who explore this topic. Alexander Crispin's delicacy and playful approach embellishes his elaborate and humoristic work.

Alexander Crispin, Lantmännen 

Continue searching Feature Shoot "food and people," you will find Chris Maggios, also known as  "Male Chef". Maggio's series are stark and repulsive, but utterly refreshing.

Image from "Male Chef"

Edible Dramas -- Pierre Javelle and Akiko Ida

Commercial food photographers Pierre Javelle and Akiko Ida took their subjectmatter a whole new level, literally! Using humorous and delicious looking backgrounds, the couple created dioramas of miniature people going about their daily lives in an edible world. The photographers have been working on the MINIMIAM since 2002. The project will featured at the International Agriculture Show in Paris this February.

Food Fight Documentary

Chris Taylor's documentary Food Fight is a  paean to Alice Waters, Chez Panisse Cafe founder and advocate of the local, small scale food movement.  This history and critique of our current industrial, monocultural, commodity, Big Ag industry is told through interviews with a wide variety of participants including:

Marion Nestle - Food Politics, Professor of Nutrition NYU

Ellen Haas - Undersecretary of Agriculture l993-7, Foodfit.com

Tom Philpott, Mother Jones, Boone, NC

Russ Parsons, LATimes food/wine critic

Representative Ron Kind -  Wisconsin

Will Allen - Growing Power, Wisconsin and Illinois 

and most inspiring for us, The Edible Schoolyard Project, represented by Kyle Cornforth.

along with organic farmers, restauranteurs, food activists and the ubiquitous Michael Pollan.  All are dedicated to rebuilding the food chain, citing distribution, not production as the main impediment to a healthier population.

Going deeper: 

GMO labeling 

Kind-Flake Amendment and the 2014 Farm Bill provides interesting links to the government subsidy stats

Charles Lane, Editor, Washington Post, on the Farm Bill  and  Food Stamps

A Delectable Evening of Imperfection (to honor Martha Wilson)

We attended this delicious evening where art and food combined...

An account the chef/artist Ame from her blog: Food Poetics

http://foodpoetics.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-delectable-evening-of-imperfection-to.html

                                

This past June I had the honor of staging a dinner at the Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee Wisconsin, one of several events fêting artist Martha Wilson. Along with a touring retrospective at another gallery, this smaller show, “The Personal is Political” included contemporary Wilson photographs in one room, and two rooms with regional artists presenting pieces made in response to Martha’s influential work. The show’s title refers to a 1970’s postmodern Feminist slogan that pointed to domestic space and the body as sights of both empowerment and contention. Now-a-days, as Deb Brhemer the director of the gallery points out, the phrase is "more likely associated with the locavore movement, and resistance to fossil fuel consumption." 

Wilson is the founding director of The Franklin Furnace, a preeminent alternative artspace in NYC that has, for the past 35 years fostered performance and installation art (my own work included) as well as an artist’s book archive that is now co-housed in the Museum of Modern Art. Martha’s own art work, starting from the 1970’s has explored how women’s identities are shaped by cultural forces, power relationships, and now, aging. In photo, video and live performances Wilson has created role-playing self-portraits; the femme fatale, the butch, the bitch, the business exec to name a few, or staged pictures of herself bruised, as a man, or old when she was young; posturing or transforming one way or other. 

Martha is a friend, mentor, and a champion (the one and only piece of art I ever sold, a series of six framed prints about HIV, she purchased) so it was a great pleasure to look through her archives in search of images and ideas as I planned the event. It was fun, almost triumphant returning to Milwaukee where I'd lived for 9 long years, and none too happy ones. Deb Brehmer, who opened PSG after I left, was and is a good friend, and coming back to present a performance felt exciting. 

I decided on a three-course meal- one for each of the gallery’s rooms, and teased out themes from Martha’s work for each setting. It was a feat, working long distance with Deb, arranging for tables and waiters and wine. I did some of the cooking in Bklyn before jumping on a plane carrying a suitcase full of ingredients I was afraid I wouldn’t readily find in Milwaukee, then camped in a friends kitchen to prepare the rest. The gallery has no kitchen so we borrowed hot plates from an old catering buddy and dishes from an artist who’s made his home into a museum of collections. We poured over literally hundreds of plates and bowls to pick out a glorious assortment of mismatched chipped china, silver and crystal and torn and stained linens to set the tables for what was to become “A Delectable Evening of Imperfection.”  

                   

Guests gathered in the vestibule for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres; tiny bite-sized gems of color and taste: crostini of fava and pea puree, wild mushrooms, and colorful vegetable brunoise sprinkled over roasted garlic butter served by three waiters costumed in Martha persona drag.

First Course: Imperfection

Here we set a long narrow table with seats for 26 guests. Down the center was a still life of unusual 

fruits and vegetables; puckered, thorny, oddly colored specimens (yucca, calabaza, chayote, purple 

asparagus…) interspersed with candelabras. Pink crystal water glasses and goblets filled with rose’ cast 

refractions of pale pink light on elegantly laid chipped china and battalions of tarnished silver.  

Waiters now in neutral black wore a changing display of cut-out Martha masks to serve a salad of foraged

watercress and hand picked local greens, shriveled tomatoes and toasted pepitas, alongside a vegetarian tamale (made locally by Mamasita's) with raw tomatillo salsa and pan seared shishito peppers.

Both food and setting played with surfaces masking delectable insides, a matter of disparity between presentation and value. 

before each course I came out wearing a mask of myself and explained what the guests were about to eat.

                                                   2nd Course: Transformation in Multiple Plates

                             Deconstructed Miso

In the next gallery guests were seated at small tables lined with layers of butcher paper, newsprint and pages from the arts section of the New York Times. On each table was a shiso plant (carried from my garden in Bklyn) with a pair of scissors, a dried shitake mushroom with a small hand grater, and a bowl of nori flakes with serving tweezers. Each place was set with a Chinese soupspoon and a bowl containing a schmear of blonde miso, tofu cubes and scallion greens. 

Now the waiters wore double masks (side to side or front to back.) Martha diptychs of contrasting images. Martha made up as Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton himself, a reflection on the double standards of attractiveness for aging men and women. Martha's torso 30 years apart. Ditto with her profile.  The waiters made the rounds, first pouring kombucha or beer, then dashi into the bowls so guests could stir miso soup, adding snippets and flakes from the tables' condiments.  When the soup dishes were cleared waiters bundled the top layer of paper table covering and began filling clear blue recycle bags with the discards.

Second small plate: sambal egg with green papaya salad served on compostable dishes. Again the waiters gathered the top layer of table covering.  

Small plate three: sushi rice with black sesame and homemade pickles (wild ramp, hakurei turnips, green daikon…) and again the bundling of disposables.

Small plate four: cheeses and dried fruit. 

                                                                       

Each of these courses represented different transformations: 

Fermentation (bacterial transformation.) 

Pickling (a form of preservation.)                                                         Drying/dehydrating.                                                                                                       Eggs.                                                                                                      Cheese (an enzymatic transformation of liquid into solid employing chemical agents and time.)                                                                                                So too kombucha and beer.  

So too, the accumulation of recyclables now strewn about the floor. 

Between plates Deb invited the artists with work on display to speak about the ways their work had been influenced by Martha's. There was a push to explore the legacy of feminism which is currently, mistakenly brushed aside as being no longer relevant. Contradicting this trend is Martha’s newest work with its insistence on calling attention to the aging feminine body, so often disparaged or ignored.

Guests were invited into the next room for course three: Reflect/Reveal.

                                      

No tables or chair for this course. Milling about guests were served cake and ice cream on mirrored plates, and a ceramic mug of sparkling wine. Decaled onto the mugs (for sale in the gallery gift shop) was a reproduction of Martha's "Marge, Martha, Mona."

This piece pictured Martha, enigmatically smiling under a towering blue bouffant, positioning herself within the cannons of art smack dab centered between high and low. For service, the waiters donned appropriate wigs and smiles.

The cake, a moist Ottolenghi Orange Almond Upside Down Cake used fruit that needed peeling and nuts needing cracking and I liked that these actions; the peeling and cracking were about revealing inner goodness. I liked that it was an upside down cake; a topsy turvy change of perspective is always revealing. The ice cream, a rich vanilla was served with a drizzle of fruity olive oil and sea salt. For me, this combination is a revelation, an unusual pairing of ingredients that transcends expectation. The guests were left holding mirrors, hopefully used to look upon themselves with the same gentle humor Martha turns upon us.