recipe chain

i've been thinking a lot, i guess since i got pregnant 3 years ago, about how my practice would change being a mother

i've had to consider material choices based upon their safety for children (and let's face it i'm clumsy enough and careless enough that heat, super sharp things, dangerous and noxious chemicals: not a good idea for me either)

some of the projects i've made are based on the materials being readily available, or best, free!

being a parent is scary these days, and the local paper continues to be delivered to our house despite our not having a subscription. my husband even tends to read his new york times subscription online before the print edition arrives. we have a weekly ad that comes and lines our recycling bin every week as well

and to be honest i've had a hard time dealing with the news lately. well for the past year and a half at least. so i had to find a way to utilize what was at hand for an upcoming project. it's tied into the ideas of wormholes, and titled "i am every age i ever was" after a quote by madeliene l'engle, "i am still every age that i have been. because i was once a child, i am always a child. because i was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be."

inspired by my great grandmother's depression-era sensibilities and her aesthetic use of plastic bags to transform,

i started recycling the trash that comes here in the form of news, and plastic

but then i stumbled across some gems among the refuse

 

like this recipe for applesauce raisin cake

and i found the creative connections between myself and my great-grandmother, her daughter (my grandmother), her daughter (my mother), and her sister (my aunt). the creativity that i share with all of these women lies in the kitchen. my aunt published a warwick family cookbook years ago, my great-grandmother being the warwick matriarch. for about a year now i've been consciously and unconsciously contributing, practicing and writing a second volume on my own. i had written my aunt about this and wanted to let her know of my interest, and that i'd like to not only get the newest generations additions, but art direct this next tome with historical and candid imagery etc. 

i have delved into kitchen math/chemistry as a way to provide my young young children with some new experiences, and to continue my own youtube learning experience/experiment (how do you make a hollow choquette pastry? i don't know let's watch a video!) 

and this is how this blog came about--my online learning processes revealed--and one of the first experiments was crystallization--which i continue to this day

having been burned by massive failures based on online recipes, i have turned pretty hard towards the printed word for measurements, facts, history, poetry. and as i was ripping up these newspapers that came (invited and uninvited) into my home, i kept stumbling across some interesting items--articles to read and recipes to try. and this awakening and chain of thought has caused me to reconsider many things: connecting my children to our lineage through food, connecting my art practice to that same chain of women, and finding expansive ways to define myself as an artist