Kitchen Knives

Today I'm thinking about cookery. I just finished reading My Life in France, by Julia Child, and in light of our Christmas dinner debacle, I am thinking back to a time when I just plain did not see the point of cooking.  Don't get me wrong, I love food.  And not in that, I'd eat a dozen donuts if no one was looking way.  I love it in the way that, if invited to dine with good people (gourmands of my own type) at a good restaurant (good based on my own criteria) I'd hock jewelry or max a credit card to do so, especially if there was the chance of a tasting menu with wine pairings.  

Now I married someone who likes to cook and who is very good at choosing recipes.  He has a subscription to Bon Appetit and has never thrown away one issue in over 12 years, as far as I can tell.  Sometimes I find very old, crusty and stained issues on the kitchen counter and realize they were originally sent to a wife he isn't married to anymore, at an address he left when the boy was 6 or 7 (Boy is now nearly 18.) But a recipe does not exactly go out of date.  Sometimes on Top Chef a judge like Gail (Editor at Large for Food and Wine) will say some dish reminds her of the 1990's.  Well, okay - food goes in and out of fashion, like the episode of Friends where Monica meets her soul-mate and both proclaim sun-dried tomatoes are "so last year," but really, if you like sun dried tomatoes in the first place, have you ever really stopped eating them?  Not as long as you can still find them at the supermarket, I'm willing to bet. 

But I digress.  Despite the fact that Man had been planning on cooking Christmas dinner, I lobbied for a change.  He was going to make beef, and that brought up all kinds of those Christmas memories for me that are the kind that make people hate Christmas and stop speaking to their relatives.  I don't hate Christmas and still speak to my relatives but it's still a matter of some sensitivity that years ago when I did not eat red meat, my mother would persist in doing a giant prime rib because my brother-in-law (who is Jewish!) seemed to like it.  So, I would fly 2300 miles through crowded airports to celebrate this holiday by "filling up on sides." Vegetarians have to do this all the time, I know - and I have lobbied for one of my nieces, based upon my own experience of how absolutely dreary it is to "feast" on potatoes sans gravy, rolls (which may or may not be from Costco or Sam's Club, since the only reason they're on the table is to fill you up), a micro-waved vegetable and if you're lucky, maybe a decent salad of some fashion.  

Man wasn't particularly happy about the change of plans, and wanted no part in collaboration. So, after I interviewed Boy on his dietary preferences (lamb or duck was okay) I checked out the internet and ventured out shopping, 3 days before Christmas.  Well, it's been snowing here, a lot. I drive a small car and it's not terrible in snow, but it's no SUV.  The biggest issue is that when there's a lot of snow and the plows come, the hills of plowed snow make it difficult to see around corners.  This was something I experienced six times, in entering and leaving parking lots of 3 different stores, including one actual meat market, a long way apart, without either lamb chops or duck breast, growing more and more upset at each turn.  

Now one of the things we discussed having was the item I was most fond of for Christmas dinner the whole time I lived in Seattle: salmon.  The food I like best to celebrate with on my birthday is Alaskan King Crab.  These two items I encountered in solidly frozen and in the case of the salmon, heartily smoked form, in abundance at both the grocery stores. No duck breasts were to be had anywhere, and although there were numerous legs of lamb, I found nary a chop!  (My mother had ironically selected salmon as her own main dish this Christmas.)  The sight of those mountains of ice-coated crab legs just depressed me to no end.  I got extremely homesick ("This would never happen in Seattle!") and when I arrived empty handed back at the house, I told Man I hated living in the MidWest, this was a stupid place where there was no good food and I didn't know why anyone lived here at all. Then I burst into tears. He agreed to go to Woodman's (where we mistakenly believe they "have everything!") and came back with...nothing, except a new opinion on the price of goose.  I went back to the web, tearfully resigned not to cook either delicious recipe I'd previously chosen, and was convinced eventually I could make a whole duck.  It would feed 3 and I might as well, since there wasn't anything else left in the stores anyway.  Later a whole frozen duck appeared in the refrigerator, and Man spent the rest of the evening commenting on the price of goose (which I gather is outrageously high.) 

Well, I cooked it.  You are instructed to pierce the entire duck with a skewer to render the fat. I guess I didn't understand how much fat we were talking about here.  It was a lot of fat, so much so that I was pouring it off every 20 minutes as instructed and feeling that the bird was out of the oven more than it was in the oven.  Essentially, it's pretty easy to cook a duck, but in the end, it's just not really that worth it.  Sure, potatoes cooked in the rendered fat later were good, but the duck itself was so unappetizing after having spent the better part of my day with it, and it's grease, I was ready to order Chinese food.  It was much harder to carve than a chicken or a turkey, just because there's all that duck fat - the carving fork got away from me, the knife was slicked with oiliness and I my hands were so slippery it was difficult to grab a leg and remove it. It's a miracle no one was hurt. But no, it's not hard to cook a duck, seriously!  It's just hard to eat it after you've cooked it.  There's not much meat on a duck, but we had an okay meal.  Not really a feast of any manner, since I once again found myself tempted to "fill up on sides." 

There are many among my readers (if I have readers!) who will find my tail of woe just disgusting.  I know most of my friends from days gone by aren't going to be happy that I even looked for lamb chops, but I'd like to point out that the first time I ate a lamb chop I was at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA, and that was just what they were serving that night - I had very little choice, I was an invited guest!  (Although filling up on sides at Chez Panisse would raise the whole practice up a big notch.)  I don't know when the first time I ate duck was, but I suspect it was somewhere nearly as important.  I do not argue with the menus of chefs who have changed our entire way of eating as Americans.  Also, living, as I do, here in the dreaded midwest, I actually have been to the fair and seen those 4H lambs being raised by children whose parents are just praying their knees off that the kids will want to stay and run the family farm.  Karma gets real tricky when you know farmers personally.  

I know I should just be happy to have Christmas dinner at all.  Sides to fill up on are a true luxury.  All the leftovers were really delicious (because Man got out the Emeril Lagasse cookbook and generated magic, bless him!) and now that the oven has been cleaned and no longer smells of duck, I know I will order it at restaurants in the future, if I'm lucky enough to find it on the menu.  We will remember this Christmas dinner at our house.  And next year go back to beef.  I think we're going to look up a good recipe for hot gin punch, too, as it seemed to make the Cratchits feel a lot better about their extremely small (and apparently deceptively priced) goose. 

Brainwashing: I read it in the newspaper!

This morning we're watching it snow and I'm checking through my email for things that need attention.  But there's not much except that I've been given permission to post some work by Amii Johns (up later) and also I got a message from my old friend, painter Sienna Reid, who is living in Italy right now, but apparently is still reading the New York Times Arts section (which I can never remember to do.) I'm fortunate that Sienna sent me a link (via Facebook) to this article.

Be sure to read the whole thing. It starts out all nice and "who knew?" and goes along to the key question, Why Embroidery.  Ruth Geuter's essay may be worth the price of the catalogue, which  you can bet I will be trying to order very soon. 

Grandmothers should be angry!

So, today is a snow-day here in chilly Wisconsin, so I checked to see if any of my students had left me a comment on sharpandpointedobjects.  They didn't. But, I got a great comment from Craftivism blogger Craftivista.  She directed me to an article in Craft magazine called Who's Craft is it Anyway? Pretty interesting question. The premise of the article is that craft product marketers have been over-using the phrase, "Not your grandmothers_" (insert any craft here.) In reading the article I reflected on some of the crafted items I have that my own grandmothers have made, and especially my mom's massive craft output over the past 7 decades.  Frankly, there are some embroideries around here that look like you could have gotten them yesterday at Urban Outfitters. They were made by my grandmother Lawson, who's own mother was a professional seamstress. 

The pictures are probably from an Erica Wilson kit. When I was a kid I actually thought needlework designer Erica Wilson was as famous as Mary Tyler Moore.  My other grandmother crocheted.  She had a more economical tendency not to use really good materials, but she was fast, and had sort of a Gee's Bend approach to color.  Lots of people on my father's side quilted, and everyone sewed.  

I have a picture my grandfather took of my mom learning to knit, and she's wearing a two-piece suit that her grandma, the seamstress, made for her. She's about 8 years old in the picture. My mom still knits me sweaters sometimes, when it's my lucky year to get one.  Since I wear them all the time, you can assume my attitudes towards my mother's knitting would not make me run to grab any project labeled "Not your mother's knitting."  Her knitting is vastly superior to mine, even, and I'm a professional. Why wouldn't it be? Practice does make perfect, and I was raised in a household where the most oft repeated phrase might just have been "Wait until I finish this row!"  And my mom is a total snob about her craft output - natural fibers, the top brands, patterns only from a few classy designers. She visits Iris, our local yarn shop, about once a week.  She likes a bargain, as any artist does, but she's apt to splurge if she finds that perfect assymetrical, complex cable pattern,  avant garde, "is she freakin' out of her mind?" sweater while in a knitting mood. 

Speaking of my mother, I need to call her today - she just got back from Colonial Williamsburg, where she was on an Embroiderer's Guild workshop trip to learn to replicate someone's historic sampler.  It's absolutely true that most of what we see at Michael's, JoAnn's, Hobby Lobby, or Walmart is indeed, Not My Mother's Embroidery.  But it's not just the historic stuff - for years she was in charge of finding jurors and organizing the jury process for Fiber Forum, which was the contemporary arm of the EGA (Embroiderer's Guild of America.) That experience prompted the birth of a family joke: One of the jurors, who shall remain nameless, once sent back a bunch of entries with only one comment on the sheet: "Why Embroidery?"

But that's a good question.  Why embroidery? does beg a valid question - nowadays, as throughout the early to late 20th century, there are plenty of people who embroider just because they find it a pleasurable activity.  But some of the imagery they're embroidering is ridiculous.  In some hands, a threaded needle is as powerful as a loaded gun. In other hands, it's just another tool allowing Disney and Hallmark to financially exploit the masses. 

The other issue is quality. Most of our grandmother's and mother's craft production from before say, 1973, is different than our contemporary crafts because it's simply a lot better made. They were taught this stuff when they were tiny girls!  They were forced to keep doing it! The work was well done because it was something that was used to discipline them - they had to learn how to go back and fit whatever was wrong.  There was no such stitch as Frankenstein Stitch. There was just sloppy, ugly, and wrong, and you'd better do it over. This is why many women wanted to go into the workforce, people!  What we so fondly call "crafting" now, was, in fact, historically a contributing factor to the Women's Movement.  Ever heard of women's lib?For vast numbers of women, that meant liberation from having to sew, knit, crochet, embroider, and quilt.

If you're a trained artist of either sex using embroidery for any reason, you better have an answer to that question: why embroidery?  There are plenty of other ways to capture an image, and if you can't justify why you're using embroidery instead of photography, painting, drawing, pastel, or crayon, then you run the risk of really insulting those who are using embroidery because of it's history, social status, embedded subtexts, aesthetics, process, or repetitive nature.  Artists have to be aware - with textiles, it really can't just be about process unless it's all about process.  Is it your art or your hobby?  If it's your hobby, have a good time.  If it's your art, learn a little about what you're doing - read about it, or talk to your elders.  

In either case, if your crafting is not specifically designed for simple enhancement to basic clothing or shelter, it's probably NOT your grandmother's embroidery.  But then again, it'd probably be news to quite a few grandmas out there that this stuff could be Art. 

School, pointedly.

Hello!  Well, it's really snowy here, and I promised my intro class I'd update the ol' blog to help them with their embroidered self-portrait projects. Here are some from a few semesters ago, made by Sarah Condon, Jess Rosenberg, Kelsey Eglehoff, Jenna Gleason, & Jacob Yahnke. 

So, I'm going to write a little bit about what happened when I PowerPoint-ed for them on Monday and how I'm probably going to go through a big stitching phase now that I've committed to knitting Christmas presents.  I blame the students, of course. If they just weren't so darned thirsty for sharp and pointed knowledge, I could allow myself to forget how much I like my subject matter, even when I'm not teaching it.  (And this is where John would pretend to sneeze while actually saying the word, "Nerd!")

Okay - our Powerpoint presentation featured the work of those anonymous laborers who brought us knowledge of the Battle of Hastings.  For being the world's most famous textile, the Bayeux Tapestry is pretty unknown - but not for it, we'd have no historical record of William the Conqueror and how the Saxons lost back in 1066 to the Normans.  I prefer to show the really gorey bits to my students, because really, the more you study embroidery, the more you realize it's not been about Precious Moments or Home Sweet Home until pretty recently in history.  How many British royal women passed their days in the Tower, awaiting execution, while stitching away on some bit of needlework now preserved in the Victoria and Albert museum?  Plenty.  How many bitter babes with no "voice" managed to tell it on a sampler? Too many to count. Anyway, at the conclusion of our presentation, Adam informed me there was a youtube video of the Battle of Hastings in which some clever person had animated the Bayeux Tapestry.  Check that out!  We did.  Pretty good sound effects.   We jetted then through the centuries and touched on a sampler done by an 11 year old (I could have used one done by a nine-year old, but since the students just learned to do French Knots, I didn't want to demoralize them totally.)  We then hit on some biggies from the resurgence period, as I like to think of it.  The second wave of feminism has a few big conceptual artists we have to look at - and frankly, all you young third wave crafter feminists out there should be ashamed of yourself if you don't know these people - Elaine Reichek and Annette Messager.   I was unable to find the Elaine Reichek image that shook my world as a graduate student online - I'm going to see if I can find it in an old copy of Fiberarts, because it's a killer and should be seen by all.  With Messager we just focused on her proverbs, though she's done a lot of stitched works, or deconstructed stitched work.  Moving on from there, we got to contemporary embroidery.  We looked at Hella Jongerius' embroidered ceramics; Clare Coles' embroidered wallpapers and furniture; Richard Saja's reworked toiles and glow in the dark french knots (but I skipped showing any Orly Cogan, who would be a good companion to Saja's because she works in a similar vein, her work is more pornographic than his, faint of heart be warned!) We also checked out some of the other artists who are in "Pricked, Extreme Embroidery" at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC.  These included the Phrenology Heads by Morwenna Catt; two works by Tilleke Schwarz; and Afro Abe by Sonya Clarke.  The best compilation of images I found from the show and also a good bit of editorial can be found here.

Some themes that emerged in my search for new embroidery were that many of the artists aren't restricting themselves to just embroidery - this may seem obvious except that if you think about artists who identify as painters, they pretty much always use paint on canvas.  Lots of these artists, like the artists in the Lawton Gallery's recent Craftivism show, identify or are identified as Conceptual Artists.  The other big observation is, the work coming out of Europe, and most specifically Great Britain, tends to be the most relevant today, and isn't laboring under any crazy bad notions of cross-stitch kits and Aunt Martha's iron-on days of the week towels.  American seem to need to constantly talk about how they're "referencing the domestic" (I admit, I've done it myself multiple times - once totally confusing a Scottish curator.) There's only one Lou Cabeen and the rest of us should get over it.  I'd like to see more racial, ethnic, and historical references in American embroidery, like Sonya Clarke's Afro Abe, (which, sharply and pointedly, I find vastly more interesting than her hats and prayer bags.)  Let's face it: there's a lot more in America that can be referenced with needle and thread than "the domestic," and in case you think that's tattoos, check out what Jenny Hart does when she's making art rather than designing for her line of iron-on transfers for Sublime Stitching.   Word to the wise, the tattoo thing is just about played out.  Matthew Benedict was doing it back in '98, and no one's done any better since, in my book. 

We wrapped up our class on Monday with a quick demo of a technique I actually learned from the aforementioned Lou Cabeen, which was how to keep paper stable if you're going to stitch on it.  For those heading off to the studio here are my answers to the questions I most anticipate from anyone who's thinking of doing this: What you're looking for is by Pellon.  Do not use Stitch Witchery or Wonder Web.  The generic name for the Pellon is fusible interfacing (if you're going to the fabric store.) Place it dots side down on the back side of your paper matrix, iron with steam and not much motion on a medium heat until the dots obscure and the bond holds.  You won't be able to use a hoop for your stitching, and you can't pull stitches out without making permanent holes in the paper, but if you do a test run you'll get the hang of it.  And yes, you can take cloth out of the cabinet in 416, as long as you cut from the end, and leave a clean edge on the roll or bolt.  You're allowed to use the cotton, black or white, but don't use the silk or satin, please.