Blog
May 2nd, 2010
I think it’s time to get that new wok I’ve been meaning to buy, because I have a feeling it’s going to get a lot of use. The cookbook I illustrated is now available, and I can’t wait to give it a whirl.
Tacoma Community House has been serving Tacoma’s immigrant community for decades, offering an enormous range of educational and social services to its clients—including language translation and interpretation, job training, citizenship assistance, and employment programs. The diversity of clients is astounding—in the last year alone, TCH served clients from fifty-four countries. To bring their clients together and welcome them to the community, TCH has a tradition of holding potluck dinners. As a result, they’ve compiled an impressive collection of international recipes over the years. In honor of their 100th anniversary this year (can you believe that?), TCH has compiled a collection of their favorites into a cookbook: ¡Entrée!
I have a feeling they had quite a job of editing; ¡Entrée! contains over 140 recipes from five world regions. Even the name is a play on this diversity, combining the inverted exclamation point from Spanish with a French term.
Dishes represented here include empanadas, tabouli, spring rolls, moussaka, samosas, gazpacho, cottage pie, a wide range of curries, and even American Indian fry bread.
To bring all these recipes together into a cohesive theme, all the illustrations focused on hands—which came in handy for the step-by-step instructions.
(Hence all the hand-modeling by Zooey.)
Each recipe is as authentic as it gets—instead of being filtered through some chef or ethnic restaurant, these dishes come directly from the family traditions of TCH’s clients. They even passed the Tailor test (and he has high standards!)—no processed ingredients, no store-bought shortcuts, no mention of canned cream-of-mushroom soup. He even gave the English plum pudding recipe (which is one of his specialties) his stamp of approval.
I think I’ll be trying this one first:
Arroz Mexicano (Mexican Rice)
1/2 cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup water
2 green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp lard or cooking oil
1 cup long grain rice
Tip: It’s important in Mexican rice to fry the rice before you add the liquids. It will make a difference in the texure and taste.
1. Mix tomato sauce and water together; add green onions, garlic and salt to the tomato sauce.
2. Heat lard or oil in a sauce pan on medium-high heat; add the rice and cook till slightly brown.
3. Add tomato sauce mixture and lower the heat; add more water of the mixture does not cover the rice. Cover and let simmer for about 20 minutes or until liquid is gone from the pan.
4. Lard is used by many Mexican families for cooking instead of cooking oils.
Oh, and about the lard: heck, yes. If you’ve ever tried refried beans at an authentic Mexican restaurant, the lard is what makes it taste so good. Don’t be afraid—a little lard won’t kill you. Go ahead and try it! Learn it, love it, lard it.
I loved working with TCH (and with Hana K., their talented designer, who treated my illustrations with such care), but even better was seeing ¡Entrée! on a bookstore shelf. You can find a copy in town at King’s Books, or you can try more sample recipes and order online here.
April 28th, 2010
Inked up,
hand-pulled,
and voilà! Our second collaborative steamroller print, an unofficial Dead Feminist, inspired by Cora Smith Eaton King, who in 1909 climbed Mt. Rainier with a party of Seattle Mountaineers and placed a “Votes for Women” banner at the summit.
This year’s Wayzgoose was the biggest bash yet! We had all the regulars—
who churned out perfection under pressure (no pun intended)—
our beloved ringleader,
a certain befezzed flavor,
and a whole host of newcomers to round out the experience.
We had an enormous crowd (thank goodness for the good weather!),
and even a few unexpected audience members.
This year I got to try my hand at driving the steamroller,
but I think pretending was plenty enough for this little guy.
Thanks to everybody who stopped by to say hello, or stuck around to lend a helping hand.
And of course, a huge bucket of gratitude to the Tacoma Arts Commission for making it all happen!
One more acknowledgement: photography by Michael O’Leary. Thanks, Dad!
April 18th, 2010
Jessica and I are carving like mad this week, getting ready for some quality steamroller time.
Next Sunday, April 25, is the sixth-annual Wayzgoose at King’s Books, right here in Tacoma. This year promises to be the biggest hullabaloo yet, with letterpress magnetic poetry, B.Y.O. t-shirt printing, papermaking demos, artist tables, and the star of the show: steamroller printing! Last year over 500 people came to check it out, despite a torrential downpour—and this year, the weather just might promise to behave, so we’re bracing for a mob. There’s a reason for the crowds: this is a heckuva lot of fun. Here’s the skinny:
6th Annual Wayzgoose!
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Noon to 4 pm
Free!
King’s Books
218 St. Helens Ave., Tacoma
Eight artists and artist-teams will be printing gigantic three-by-four-foot linocuts in the street, including Jessica and me—we’ll be adding another unofficial Dead Feminist to our roster. (Take a gander at our last steamroller print here.) This is just a sneak peek; stop by next Sunday to see this block in action.
See you there!
April 12th, 2010
The sun came out yesterday afternoon, and Mt. Rainier peeked out from behind the clouds. On a whim I tossed my camera into the car and bolted to Paradise, where I had been hoping for one more research shot for my book: Rainier in the snow.
Well, I certainly got my wish.
An hour and a half later I was standing in the cold, at the highest point on the southern park road, and the furthest one can go before the snow melts at the end of June and the rest of the park opens.
I looked over at one of the few cars around me, and was absurdly reminded of all those winters I spent in North Dakota (minus the mountains, of course).
It was nice to think that if I wanted snow, I could come and get it whenever I wanted—without having to shovel my way out of it.
April 7th, 2010
Yesterday I headed north with a friend for my second Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. I was hoping to do some drawing this year, but the weather had other plans.
It was like I’d never been there before—everything was different this year. For one thing, the tulips are blooming early, so the daffodils hadn’t retired yet.
For another, the farmers have rotated their crops, so the tulips are occupying different fields than last year—which gave me a whole new set of photo possibilities.
And best of all, we had the place to ourselves—Tuesday discouraged the tourists with day jobs, and the rain took care of the rest.
The Skagit Valley is quickly becoming a favorite haunt; it was hard not to turn the day trip into a week of following all the back roads and exploring all the hidden pockets of scenery I discovered yesterday.
That’s okay, though. I know that next time, more than just tulips will be waiting for me.
March 22nd, 2010
For the most part, Puget Sound is extremely deep, and lined with narrow, rocky beaches, with steep drop-offs and underwater cliffs. But Dash Point is one place where, at low tide, you can walk a long, long way out on a pristine sandbar. I love the feeling of standing out in the middle of a drained basin, just steps away from the familiar but suddenly in a whole different world.
March 8th, 2010
If you ever wanted to find out once and for all what the heck an artist book is, take a little field trip to Burien, WA. The group show Page Turner: Contemporary Artist Books is up this month at the Burien Arts Gallery, a tiny half-Cape house converted into a charming exhibition space.
Kelda Martensen did a stand-up job of curating the show—and artist books aren’t easy to display, believe me. She’s represented a wide variety of work, from prints to traditional bindings to kinetic sculptures, featuring the work of artists nationwide, including Inge Bruggeman, Ken Botnick, Regin Ingloria, Jana Harper, Diana Guerrero-Macía, and many others.
The gallery is open noon to four, Thursday through Sunday, and on Thursday, March 18, at 7 pm, Kelda will be giving a curator’s talk about the work in the show, sponsored by the Book Arts Guild. Free admission, always.
I’ve got a couple of pieces in the show, as well. Above is From Concentrate,
and this is The Faery Gardener.
Here’s the rub, though: the recession has hit all galleries where it hurts, but since the Burien Arts Gallery is run by the city, times have been especially tough there. This will be the last exhibit in the Cape Cod house; and possibly the last ever for Burien Arts, unless they can find public support, funding and a new space. So come check it out before they have to close their doors on March 19 (the website says they’re already closed, but you can still see the show).
Speaking of artist books, if you missed Mnemonic Sampler at PLU, there’s another chance to catch the series in a new venue, closer to home: the Tempest Lounge, here in Tacoma.
My friend Denise is the owner of the place, and when she asked if I was interested in showing there, I jumped at the chance. Although I love the clean beauty of a traditional gallery space, my favorite exhibition venues are the offbeat ones—restaurants, coffee shops, libraries, and now classy retro bars! I love these spaces because they bring art into real life, and invite folks to feast their eyes wherever they are. Most people (including myself, I must admit) are more likely to step into an eatery or a library than a gallery, and a coffee shop doesn’t have the same intimidating associations that some people have with galleries (that feeling of “If you’re not here to buy, you shouldn’t be here at all”). Plus, at the Tempest you can have a beer or cocktail while you look at the art. You can’t beat that.
If beer isn’t your thing, you can also have a cuppa tea or joe, and the food is divine—Denise runs a classy joint here. So curl up on a retro couch for happy hour, come chat by the adorable green picket fence, or just stop in to take in that fabulous red wall. Mnemonic Sampler will be up through April 30.
February 23rd, 2010
…it would be the unexpected blooming of an early spring.
February 13th, 2010
This year marks the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Washington—a feat only made possible by the collaborative efforts of many dedicated people of every walk of life and political stripe. In this spirit, we present our seventh broadside in the Dead Feminists series, Just Desserts.
Through our research at the Washington State Library, we discovered that our state’s suffrage movement had many leaders, rather than one prominent figurehead. We also learned that there was so much head-butting, personality-clashing and partisan in-fighting going on within the organizations involved (Mesdames Hutton and DeVoe, I’m looking at you!) that it would be impossible to tell the whole story in one letterpress poster. So instead of quoting a single historical feminist, we cited a collaborative publication—the Washington Women’s Cook Book, published in 1908-1909 for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition—and featured four women symbolic of the movement: May Arkwright Hutton, Bernice Sapp, Cora Smith Eaton, and Emma Smith DeVoe. The quote:
“Are not our desserts and salads things of beauty and the joy of the moment?”
The book was a clever piece of propaganda that operated on the principle that the way to a man’s heart—or vote—is through his stomach. All those jellied centerpieces and whimsical soufflés must have done the trick—the following year, women got the vote.
And for my part, the quote turned me into an almost-literal kid in a candy store; the design was just begging for elaborate confections and candy-coated typography. At first, though, I was turned off by the idea of having to draw salads (I wanted more ice cream!), until Jessica read off a litany of aspic salad and gelatin dessert recipes from the book. That’s when the light bulb turned on: Jell-o salad! The decade-plus I spent in the Midwest was about to serve me well.
Turns out that Jell-o fit right into the turn-of-the-century theme: molded gelatin desserts were a Victorian favorite, and the name “Jell-o” was first coined in 1897 (and if you look carefully, the “J” from the original Jell-o box makes a cameo in the print). There seemed to be no end of antique recipes, advertisements and illustrations at my disposal.
I might be horrified by the idea of eating gelatin salads, but drawing them was the most fun I’ve had in a long, long time. Zooey and I each spent hours researching vintage Jell-o molds—probably more for the pure fascination than for the value of the reference material.
For the sweets portion of our little menu, I turned to an old favorite for inspiration: Andy Warhol.
Forget what you know about Campbell’s soup cans or Elvis portraits; Andy got his start as an illustrator specializing in fashion and food. In 1959 he illustrated a spoof cookbook called Wild Raspberries (it’s been on my shelf since high school, and I finally found a direct use for it!), filled with ridiculous “gourmet” recipes for things like “A&P Surprise” (those of you in New England will get that one) and “Seared Roebuck.”
The illustrations are fantastic (and the polar opposite of my style), but the thing that really drew me in was the lettering. Andy had his mother, Julia Warhola, write all of the text of his early illustrations in her shaky, school-girl script. Mrs. Warhola spoke little to no English, and simply copied her son’s notes letter-for-letter, so the text in Wild Raspberries has charming errors and misspellings throughout.
I loved the down-to-earth quality of Mrs. Warhola’s cursive, so I wrote a recipe from the Washington Women’s Cook Book along the border of the broadside in a similar hand (though to warn you, it’s a recipe I wouldn’t recommend trying!).
And of course, I couldn’t do without a little ice cream homage.
Like The Curie Cure, this piece is printed in three colors—although the three we chose let us create many more. Our color scheme allowed us to print in a similar fashion to commercial printing, where a minimum of colors (CMYK—cyan, magenta, yellow, black) are layered to create a full-color image. Our layering of translucent pink, blue and yellow ink allowed us to create a full rainbow and a convincing depiction of foreign objects floating in jelly.
Heaps of thanks to everyone who came to our talk at the State Library the other night, despite lousy weather and rush-hour traffic—we had a tremendous turnout, and a huge show of support for our state’s oldest cultural institution.
One more thing: three cheers for the incredible staff at the Washington State Library (many of whom are among those whose jobs have been cut and will end very soon) who made our talk and this very piece possible. Because we couldn’t have done it without them, we have donated a portion of our proceeds to support the State Library’s collections.
After all, it’s about preserving (in jelly?) that joy of the moment for everyone to share, right?
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Just Desserts: No. 7 in the Dead Feminists series
Edition size: 100
Poster size: 10 x 18 inches
Printed on an antique Vandercook Universal One press, each piece is printed on archival, 100% rag, recycled paper, and signed by both artists.
Colophon reads:
In 1909 suffragists saw an opportunity to forward their cause in Seattle at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific (AYP) Exposition. The Washington Equal Suffrage Association (WESA), led by president Emma Smith DeVoe, provided an AYP exhibition on the importance of women’s right to vote and hosted Women’s Days, distributing pamphlets alongside displays of domesticity. WESA treasurer Dr. Cora Smith Eaton, joined The Mountaineers’ AYP expedition to climb Mt. Rainier and placed a “Votes for Women” banner at the summit. Suffragists from eastern Washington, led by May Arkwright Hutton, came by the trainload to attend the AYP and WESA’s National Convention. Many of the details—from ideological clashes to victories—were archived at the Washington State Library, thanks to Bernice Sapp.
Women from around the country also contributed to the Washington Women’s Cook Book, published to sell at the AYP. Filled with recipes, domestic advice and inspirational suffragist quotes, it reassured male voters that the women in their lives would continue homemaking once they had the right to vote: “Give us the vote and we will cook, the better for a wide outlook.” Compiled by Linda Deziah Jennings, the preface extolled the virtues of making beautiful things, and the simple joy of desserts and salads. Suffragists in Washington worked through differences in personalities, social backgrounds and political parties to create a winning recipe, gaining their right to vote in 1910.
Illustrated by Chandler O’Leary and printed by Jessica Spring with gratitude to allthe cooks. 100 copies were printed by hand at Springtide Press in Tacoma. February 2010
UPDATE: poster is sold out. Reproduction postcards available in the Dead Feminists shop!
February 10th, 2010
The past couple of weeks have been an absolute whirlwind, and when I look in the mirror I see a walking, talking to-do list. The notes-to-self strewn all over the studio (among half-finished boxes, reference materials, pencil layouts, proof prints, watercolor pans, etc.) aren’t enough, so now I’ve taken to muttering little reminders under my breath—call this client, mail this order, drop off this pile of prints, invoice this subscriber, edit this illustration, proof these plates, cut this book cloth, list these cards, upload these photos, etc.
I needed a break. So today I bolted to Seattle to clear my head.
One of my favorite hobbies is wandering around the Market alone, especially on winter weekdays when it’s pretty much empty. Losing myself among the fruit stalls and neon is as therapeutic as meditation.
I wasn’t in the drawing mood this time, but the Market is also on my short list of all-time favorite sketching haunts. This is one from a year ago or so, on a completely packed, sunny Saturday, when I flattened myself against poles and ducked down onto the curb to draw without being trampled by tourists.
I love it for the people-watching when it’s crowded, but there’s something special about having the place to myself. There is a downside, however (besides being heckled by bored fishmongers): it’s awfully hard not to splurge on sampling from the unbelievable smorgasbord of fresh goodies.
Now how could I say no to that?