Archive for G&G

gallery exhibit opens February 13th

Here’s an update about the 3 components of my installation at the RISK exhibit. The opening reception is Thursday February 13 from 5:30 – 8:30pm and the exhibit runs from February 10 – April 26, 2014 at the Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S. Wabash in downtown Chicago.

1) Anxiety Garden: Financial Crisis Mycoremediation
This piece features oyster mushrooms decomposing books that represent the anxieties of the global financial crisis, including financial guides about risk management, texts authored by Chicago School economists like George Stigler, and books by and about the figureheads of neoliberalism, such as Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping.

2) Anxiety Garden: Do not open until 2021
This piece features jars of Iranian pickled garlic (torshi-eh seer), also known as Seven-Year Pickle because it is best eaten after being aged several years. This is not a heat-pasteurized or traditional salt brine ferment, and as such it may be considered risky by professional food safety standards. Chicago health code prohibits commercial kitchens to do their own canning without special permission to do “Modified Atmosphere Packaging”, requiring a course in “Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points”. However, traditional folk methods usually do not follow these types of stringent procedures. For generations Iranians have pickled all sorts of vegetables in large clay pots which were stored in cellars to age. Please email soulfoodstories-at-gmail.com if you would like to take home one of the jars of pickles at the end of the exhibit.

To learn more, join Columbia College Chicago’s office of Asian American Cultural Affairs for Food for Thought: Operation Pickle, at the Glass Curtain Gallery on the first floor of 1104 S Wabash Ave. Try food from Iran and learn about the traditional Persian new year, Norooz, which falls on the vernal equinox. In the Zoroastrian tradition, a celebratory table spread called “haft-seen” is laid out with seven objects symbolizing the return of new life in spring. Come to the gallery to learn more about one of these items which happens to be garlic. Seating is limited, RSVP to rgupta-at-colum.edu.

3) Anxiety Garden at the Green Art + Social Practice (GASP) Fair
The first ever Green Art + Social Practice (GASP) Fair is seeking proposals for student work to be exhibited during a pop-up art and science fair at Columbia College from 2:00 pm-6:00 pm on Friday, April 25, 2014. The GASP Fair takes the notion of a traditional poster session and combines it with the strategies of social practice, using participatory engagement to explore the diverse intersections of art, science, and the humanities. To apply, contact ftoosi-at-colum.edu

In addition to acting as the faculty organizer for the GASP Fair, I’m starting seeds indoors to be transplanted to the Papermakers’ Garden at 8th and Wabash. The garden bed will be used to grow powerful medicinal plants that are used to treat anxiety. To learn more, join me for Heritage Tea Time from 12:30-1:30 on Monday March 10 to try some anxiety tea and heritage and heirloom foods like benne wafers.

Fresh start for 2014

Happy new year everyone!
seerChicago ushered in the new year with a dramatic polar vortex. Winter hibernation has been a time for brewing, fermenting, and fruiting mushrooms in preparation for a new chapter of GARLIC & GREENS. G&G will be featured in an exhibit about social practice at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery in the South Loop. GARLIC & GREENS: Anxiety Garden will focus on the therapeutic properties of gardening for self-care and medicine, while also addressing the political anxieties of contemporary culture. For this exhibit G&G will highlight traditional Persian pickled garlic, oyster mushrooms from recycled waste materials, and herbal remedies you can grow in your home garden. Stay tuned for updates!

The opening reception is February 13 from 5:30 – 8:30pm and the exhibit runs from February 10 – April 26, 2014. For more information go to: http://www.colum.edu/Student_Life/DEPS/glass-curtain-gallery/exhibitions/risk-empathy,-art-and-social-practice/index.php

fall update

GARLIC & GREENS has been busy with urban agriculture tours and farm dinners hosted by Rooting, which had its closing reception and symposium this past weekend.

We are also thrilled to let you know that the Shoebox Lunch project was recently featured in the Chicago Tribune! You can read the full article on-line at this link: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-09-25/features/ct-food-0925-garlic-and-greens-20130925_1_shoe-box-documentary-food-heritage

 

 

Rooting: Regional Networks, Global Concerns

“Shoebox Lunch” is currently featured in Rooting: Regional Networks, Global Concerns, a symposium and exhibition highlighting projects by artists, cultural workers, radical chefs, rural and urban farmers, and small businesses spotlighting creative responses to the extreme environmental, social and economic changes facing local and global communities with a focus on the Chicago, New Delhi, and other regions in India. To find out more, visit the exhibit which is up at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Sullivan Galleries until October 13.

Shoebox Lunch Launch

Last week marked the “Shoebox Lunch” launch event, introducing the completed book-in-a-box to the public.

One of the featured speakers in the documentary is Marcus, pictured below with a couple of friends, Chakeyda and Lily, holding their complimentary copies of Shoebox Lunch.

launch_event

From left to right: Chakeyda, Lily, Fereshteh, and Marcus at the Shoebox Lunch Launch event.

Copies of the book are still available but quantities are limited, so do be in touch if you’d like one. All purchases will allow the project to be shared for free with people who are low or no vision.

It was a great joy to celebrate with a wonderful, supportive community of friends and supporters! Thanks so much to everyone who made it out to this event.

Many thanks also to Archeworks, Spontaneous Interventions, the Global Alliance of Artists Environment Xchange, and Majani Catering for their participation in this event!

Gratitude for chickens

photograph of chickens at Prairie Crossing Learning FarmOne of the objects featured in the Shoebox Lunch book is a chicken feather. It’s been a few months since we received our feathers, and we’d like take a moment to thank the chickens and the humans who sent them our way. The feathers were donated by Chicago residents Laura Foley and Carla McGarrah, as well as The Prairie Crossing Learning Farm in Grayslake, Illinois. Laura and Carla both keep chickens at their homes, while Prairie Crossing is a working organic farm that does hands-on education promoting conservation and healthy ecosystems. They have all kinds of classes and workshops and tours for the public; it’s definitely worth a field trip to learn more about this fantastic project.

Our contact at Prairie Crossing, Erin Cummisford, tells us that their feathers came from multiple breeds: Black Australorps, Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rocks, and Buff Orpingtons. She was kind enough to send a photo of the chickens, which you see above. Some of them were adopted to new homes last fall, others were butchered for food.

photograph of feathers from the Prairie Crossing Chickens

GARLIC & GREENS would not be possible without the support of the people and animals who have contributed to this project. Next time you are out, listen closely for the sounds of birds, insects, and other creatures who make their home in our gardens and farms, and thank them for their service! To get a chicken feather for yourself, order a copy of the book by contacting us at soulfoodstories -at- gmail -dot- com.

envelope from the Shoebox Lunch live event

This is a close-up from the envelope made for each feather featured in the live version of “Shoebox Lunch”.

Shoebox Lunch LIVE

cherry_brandy_labelOn Sunday 9 June at 8:30 PM, GARLIC & GREENS is proud to present a live version of Shoebox Lunch at Chicago’s own Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival. This interactive listening event will take you on a train journey completely in the dark. One by one, you will meet characters telling personal stories about families and food heritage. These memories will be shared with you through sound, touch, taste, and smell.

Attendance is limited to 15 participants, so if you can’t make it, never fear! Please join us later this summer for the official Shoebox Lunch book launch party:
Wednesday 17 July, 2013
6-8 PM
625 N. Kingsbury St.
Chicago, IL 60654
RSVP to Archeworks: archeworks.org/event_rsvp.cfm

65$+ Kickstarter contributers may pick up their copies at this event, otherwise they will be shipped by mail. Contact us at soulfoodstories-at-gmail.com if you would like to have your very own copy of the Shoebox Lunch book-in-a-box. Quantities are limited. Your purchase will allow us to share the project for free with people who are low or no vision.

“You just balance it out.”

“I’m going back to the way I grew up and finding out, darn it, I was very healthy. Even though people will tell you today that soul food cooking and African American cooking is very bad for you.  It clogs the arteries.  And, I’m like: No, you balance that out.  You don’t have to have fried chicken.  You don’t have to have fried fish. You bake your fish. You bake your chicken. Maybe I can’t have greens every day, but I can have salad… You just balance it out.” Dorothy Horton-Jackson

This quote is from one of the interviews featured in the forthcoming “Shoebox Lunch” audio book-in-a-box. I want to highlight Ms. Dorothy’s words today as I reminisce about some GARLIC & GREENS activities from the past few months.

Last year, I was approached by Sarah Ross and Ryan Griffis to create an artist multiple for their collaborative project, Regional Relationships. Regional Relationships is a subscription based art/culture project that commissions artists, writers, scholars and/or activists to create projects that materialize work across spaces or between places. The project website will tell you that RR is interested in work “that investigates the natural, industrial and cultural landscapes of a region.”

This is the logo for the Regional Relationships project described in this blog post.

Sarah and Ryan were interested in featuring something related to the GARLIC & GREENS initiative for the third edition of Regional Relationships. I had been a fan of Sarah and Ryan’s work from afar, so I was quite honored to be asked and I couldn’t say no! The project took some time to materialize. My goal was to highlight a story from the many interview clips that would not make it to the final edit of the audio book. As any editor will tell you, there are many wonderful moments that have to be left on the proverbial cutting room floor. I decided to focus on a conversation with my friend Joy Smith, who shares her description of a noodle dish called yock or yak-a-mein.

This image is a sample page from the final yock project, a comic book with line drawings. This page shows bottles, referencing the different ingredients that make up yock.

I went to college in a small town with no fast food chains. Students managed industrial kitchen co-ops where they subjected their peers to strange cooking experiments. There I learned how to make burnt yogurt and large batches of wet rice. But from time to time, we indulged in the convenient foods well loved by our peers at other schools: microwavable, rehydratable, and unhealthy.

I probably ate less ramen than most people in college. But I ate a lot of a cousin noodle dish called yock. I don’t remember the first time Joy prepared yock for us to share. I remember it was something made with spaghetti, ketchup, and soy sauce. There must have been something else in it, but I’m not sure what. I remember it was delicious. It was our version of ramen, but tastier.

It wasn’t until I moved to Japan after graduation that I was reacquainted with ramen as an actual food, not one that comes in freeze-dried bricks, but one with whole restaurants built around slurping.

But I never ate yock before or after that time. Was this dish just a product of Joy’s culinary imagination? If it was so popular in the Tidewater region of Virginia, where I grew up, how come I had never heard of it before? These are some of the questions that inspired the Yok Yock project.

Language is constantly evolving. Humans try to contain it with dictionaries.

It’s the same with food. People have cookbooks to claim the definitions of food. But go down to the coastal areas of Virginia and Louisiana, you’ll find everyone’s version of yock is THE version yock.

This is page 4 of the project. It depicts LEAH CHASE from  Dooky Chase restaurant who says: “No, I don’t have a recipe for yaka mein, honey. It is not Creole - it’s Chinese. I know a customer has a hangover when someone comes in asking for it. It is sold only in the black community, usually from small Chinese takeouts.”Below that is a drawing of LINDA GREEN, known as the New Orleans “ya-ka-mein lady”. She serves up the noodles from her famous food truck at festivals and second line parades. She says:"Ya-ka-mein in New Orleans, specifically in the black community, is like red beans. Especially...if you’ve been out drinking or whatever, you get some ya-ka-mein to sober you up." It may not be evident at first glance, but a lot of research went into this 20-page booklet that was hand-rendered by comics artist Neil Brideau, who collaborated on the project. We decided to mix fact and fiction, quoting from actual newspaper stories that featured yock, and mixing in fantasy, cryptozoological elements, and specific references that only some people might pick up on. One of these was a shout-out to Braddock, PA and the famous ketchup company located in nearby Pittsburgh. The final project, Yock Yok, came packaged with a CD of my conversation with Joy, and a dishtowel showing the coastal areas of southeastern U.S. where yock is commonly found. It’s distributed by Regional Relationships, so you can contact them to sign-up for a subscription.

Like a lot of popular comfort foods, there isn’t just one definitive way to make yock. The basic thing you need to know is that yock is a hybrid noodle dish with a broth made from ketchup and other ingredients such as soy sauce, vinegar, cayenne, onion, and egg.

This image depicts a screen capture from a Facebook page for fans of yock who hail from my hometown.

There’s even a Facebook page for fans of yock who hail from my hometown.

Most versions of yock are super salty and greasy. Its key ingredient is ketchup, which some people might categorize as a super-processed “edible foodlike substance“. But you can make a healthy bowl of yock at home by taking control of the process and making a few changes here and there. The basic premise of the dish can be hacked to be delicious and nutritious, and this is evidenced by Joy’s vegan version of yock which is tweaked to incorporate fresh vegetables.

Recently there is growing awareness around the intersection of health issues and soul food, from Ms. Dorothy’s assertion above, about all things in moderation, to Byron Hurt’s documentary film, Soul Food Junkies.

This is a photograph of a panel discussion about food justice after a screening of the documentary film Soul Food Junkies.

Panel discussion about food justice after a screening of the documentary film Soul Food Junkies.
18 November 2012 at the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago

In November last year GARLIC & GREENS helped host a screening of the film at the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. It later aired on PBS and has made it to various screenings across the country. It will be playing again at the One Earth Film Festival, happening this weekend in Oak Park, IL.

Celebrating the healthy origins of popular food traditions is one of the catalysts for the GARLIC & GREENS initiative, and I look forward to discovering other projects that do the same.

How about you? Are you hacking the cafeteria food at your college dorm? Making your own ketchup from home-grown tomatoes? We’d love to hear from you. And if you make your own version of yock, send us some photos and let us know how it turned out!

Housing Segregation: The Great Migration and Beyond

One of the assertions often made about Chicago is that it’s the nation’s most segregated city. I admit I’ve been guilty of invoking this cliché in the past. For that reason I’m intrigued by this set of interactive maps tracing the lack of integration even after the The Fair Housing Act of 1968:
http://projects.propublica.org/graphics/city-maps
Between 1910 and 1960, the Great Migration saw 6 million African Americans move from the rural South to the industrial North. Through public policy and private action, the black migrants were largely segregated into neighborhoods that were almost exclusively black. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 required the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to take “affirmative” steps to end housing discrimination and promote integration. But 45 years of the federal housing discrimination ban has failed to break up that segregation.

These maps are part of an important investigation from Propublica called “Living Apart: Fair Housing in America”

MDW Fair

In early November, Garlic & Greens participated in the MDW Fair as part of an exhibit of Propeller Fund grantees. People could listen and interact with a short excerpt from the audio book-in-a-box. Many thanks to volunteers Allie, Annie, Jamie, Liz, and Vanessa for help tabling during the show!