The Edible Palette

For the Love of a Turban Squash and the Studio Stroll.  

                    Twice yearly in Asheville, a grand event called the Studio Stroll happens.  For two days (and really this event begins the day before, on Friday, when collectors and devoted locals pop in to see their favorite artists’ studios before the throngs set in at 10 the next morning) thousands (!) of people get out of their cars and prowl the studios of the 150 or so artists working in the district.  It is amazing, really.  Amazing that for two days, a working neighborhood magically becomes (by a good 3 days of thorough scrubbing and artistic red-carpet rolling) a buzzing, mobbed shopping mall of completely handmade, one-of-a-kind objets d’art.  

                    The other special thing about the studio stroll, to me, is that you get to see artworks in the space where they were created.   You know how you get a whole new sense of someone when you see inside their home for the first time?  Well, it’s the same for a work of art or craft.  To see the space in which a painting was created gives me so many more layers of understanding into the piece, not to mention the painter.  I treasure this suitcase full of knowing, of seeing deeply into the heart of a thing.

                    And this doesn’t even begin to describe the thrill, for me as an artist, to get to have unmediated and immediate feedback about the work I do from people of all stripes— from collectors to curious lookers.  Talk about insight!  Even more than that, I cherish knowing the folks who for whatever reason fall in love with a painting I’ve made and take it home.  I could write a hundred thankyou notes and send up a hundred grateful smoke signals to these beloved people and I still wouldn’t feel satisfied that I have conveyed how important they and their decision to buy my work are to me.  

                    Although I’m far less involved in the Stroll than I used to be (in the time before parenthood known in my house as “P.J.”), I still get a charge the week before the big event.  It’s like nesting, but for artists.  I put all other chores/obligations/everything aside for a week and just paint.  It is the most delicious week of the whole year for me.  Something about the energy of the event, the anticipation of folks coming all the way from wherever to see our work, offers a sparkly, starry elixir that makes these two weeks my most creative and productive of the whole year.  

                    So here’s a smoke signal to the god of that special relationship between people who make art and people who like to look at art:  I am so grateful, grateful, grateful…

Love. Part 2.

                    Back a few posts ago, I shared a photo of a watercolor in progress and told the beginning of the story that inspired it.   I’ll finish that story today and share the finished work.  But to recap…Two Weddings and a Pregnancy, AKA “Love.”

                    …So two sets of far-flung dear friends arrive in town for the wedding of one of the couples.  The first couple, the one who’s not getting married until NEXT summer, brought this load of glorious homegrown veggies and laid them out on our table.  And the second couple, the couple whose very homegrown wedding was only days away, well, they brought magic right straight into my own kitchen…  

                    The secret that I haven’t told you yet is that the Wednesday before their wedding, these dear friends who have been trying harder than anyone I’ve ever known to try anything, our beloved friends who were about to cause the universe to hiccup by marrying, found out via an email (and a subsequent phonecall for further confirmation) while sitting at our kitchen table that they were finally, at long last, pregnant.  

                     And just yesterday, my sweet friend says she’s beginning her 15th week, that a little, thriving person in there is growing fingernails and hiccuping, just like her big sister, Universe.  

                     This painting is dedicated to all of them.  And to love.

Who do you miss?

For the next 19 days, I’d love to have your help building a shrine.

 It’s all set up on my porch— pumpkins, sticks, sage, candles, goldenrod, buzzing bees, and little stone skulls.  Now, it needs spirits to honor.

 I’ve gathered river stones and am painting them for our sorely-missed beloveds.  Please come by and inscribe their name on a stone for the altar.  (If you’re out of town and can’t make it over, just tell me the name and I’ll make a stone for them.)  

On Nov. 1, drop by with your sweet one’s favorite treat— you know they’ll be happy to share.  

          September has been quite a month!  In fact, August AND September were quite a month.  

          Our first Winnecour Birthday Month was big, splashy, colorful, joyful, and full of food.  Josh and I made some decisions about birthdays this year, some of which we’ll stick by, others we’ll drop before next year.  One decision we’ll continue:  since all 3 of our birthdays happen within 30 days, we’re going to decorate the house once the first week of August and leave it party-fied until the 2nd week of September.  The dining “room” was festooned with homemade banners of all stripe (and dot and color), and the guest room/office/storage room stayed a wreck to keep the spare table handy for quick birthday dinner party set-up.  

          One decision we may or may not drop is that our way of celebrating birthdays is to throw a dinner party.  Now, we love hosting a dinner party and will do so at the drop of a hat; it’s our friends’ stamina we’re worried about.  All 3 of our birthdays just so happen to fall on the same day of the week (strange, no?), so for 3 wednesdays in 5 weeks, a knot of devoted friends trucked over for a birthday dinner.  They swore they didn’t mind, but jeez.  Perhaps we’ll mix it up a bit next year:  brunch for Josh’s birthday, tea for mine, dinner for Junipers?  

          Juniper’s 2nd birthday dinner was my favorite for several reasons, one because it was the last of the 3 and I’d had tons of practice getting the rhythm right, and another because it was just plain beautiful.  And we wore crowns.  Homemade crowns with inscriptions— magic spells— on the inside, so the wearer of the crown could experience some of the special powers the crown could imbue.  Papa Lewis wore his crown fabulously.  

          Birthday dinner hinged around a Rainbow Plate (very much inspired by my friend Jean who threw her 6 year old a “Rainbow Fairy Princess Unicorn Party” a couple weeks prior.  Plus meatloaf which the toddler tucked into with gusto.)  We sang the birthday song over a mountain of berries stuck with 3 rainbow candles.  And we finally figured out— actually Josh figured out— that if we want Juniper to head for bed without acting her age, we would have to let her escort each guest to the door.   Our home was our own by 8pm, Juniper sleeping away by 8:30.  That is our kind of party.  Next day during naptime, the banners came down, the office/guest room got put back together, and ho-hum regularness was re-established in tiny, cramped chez Winnecour.  

Some firsts…

          This was the first birthday (well, no, the second) I truly LOVED.  No strife, no angst, no feelings of “…that’s all?  it’s over now?”   (Liza and Nia, Andy and Trent, thanks for the first.)

          This was the first time I felt Josh’s birthday was appropriately celebrated.  Although he hates a big fuss over his day, I think he secretly likes a little jazz.  And that’s exactly what he got, finally.

          And Juniper’s birthday, well…  I never knew birthdays were as much (if not more) for the parents as the children.  It’s a day for us to honor all the wonder and magic that got us where we are. It’s a sparkling, candle-illuminated vantage point from which we can pause and regard all that lies behind us and a little of what lies ahead, for our children as well as for our family.   It’s a day devoted stictly to marvel:  marvel at that little person you made— are making; marvel at what you did to get her here; marvel that the hard work, little by little, just keeps getting easier; marvel that you’re blessed enough to get to spend your days with this precious little person, this precious little family.  

Happy Birthday, everyone.  YOU are a marvel.  

Born with a silver (plated) spoon and christened in beet juice:  welcome to the (cyber) world, Edible Palette!  Thanks, cyber world, for hosting me and my new blog baby. Because nothing kicks off something big (big for me, not you!) like poetry, a poem:

Irreverent Baking

I should be upstairs with the others, drumming up ways

to heal the world, save the animals, pray for water

in a far-off continent, devote the remainder of my days

to a catalog of restorations. But this morning, it was the matter

of scones that drew my gaze, and my feet remained

planted in the kitchen. One must never ignore the instinct

to create, is what I told myself, and soon the counter was stained

with flour, my hands sticky with dough, the house inked

with the smell of blueberry possibility, and I knew I was not wrong.

This was my prayer, my act of healing, my offering, my song.

- Maya Stein