Over the course of writing this blog, the connections between my landscape work, painting/installation and love of food have become more distinctly defined. It’s funny how once I identify a current in my consciousness that that current becomes the leitmotif ( or not so leit) of the following months or seasons – with that current being everywhere I look. I wonder if that happens to anyone else.
Among the common congruent currents that I have discovered recently, are two short films – about food, heritage and perspective. One is episode six of Mind of a Chef – the outstanding series about Chef David Chang (of Momofuku in NYC) and his experience with food and other chefs. In episode 6 he visits with Chef Rene Redzepi (of Noma in Denmark). There’s a true art with which Redzepi approaches food and the experience of place. He examines Nordic Cuisine, and integrates ingredients that are common in the landscape – but not on our tables any more. One of the farmers interviewed in the film that he works with is a true artist, defying conventional agriculture and following patterns, that like all greatness in my book, are initially confusing but genius in their intuitive poetry and internal logos. This farmer and this chef have found ways to truly respect the landscape and give their customers a profoundly different perspective on how to experience the world and ecologies around them. From what I understand, they are able to do it in a delicious way.
The other film is about Jesus Garcia, an ecologist in Arizona who has started the Kino Heritage Tree project.The film’s title is Tasting History . The story is truly inspiring in its own regard as a document of this man’s life journey. As a window into the importance of connecting people to landscape through food and cultural significance it’s wonderful. Like Redzepi, Garcia has a profound respect and understanding of the cultural power of food and landscape. The way Garcia talks about landscape, food and culture illustrates how elemental those connections are to his identity and ultimately to all of us – conscious of it or not.
The beauty and poetry in each of these projects compelled me to write about them. Seeing the way these men talk about the world around them and their intuitive way of going about manifesting their wonder and joy in it is a refreshing and inspired set of examples and helps me in the ever-constant distillation of my own experience of culture/landscape/food. It’s never far away – and examples are all around. Just look out the window.The images below are of apple and pear trees that remain from the farm orchard behind my house. They produce the sweetest, funkiest looking fruit and the most intensely perfumed blooms that I’ve ever experienced.
