BlogCrush: Feasting on Art

Mondrian Pound Cake Assembly

Food is integral to our daily living, and I would argue that so is the interaction with art. This does not mean you have to be creating art or overtly involved in the appreciation of it, but (without getting into a conversation on the definition of art) it taps at our senses and exists alongside us whether or not we take notice. Through the beauty of a sunrise, the tapping of a foot or swaying of a hip to rhythm, the lacing of cream through a fresh cup of coffee, the adornment of a necklace...and if we keep counting and collecting with each step we take, we might just get dizzy. At least I do from time to time.

This is why I think it was absolutely genius for art historian and food lover Megan Fizell to strike up an educational conversation on the interaction of food and art in the format of her blog Feasting on Art. She leads this conversation with poise and intrigue, and I have been drawn to her posts ever since discovering the blog just over a year ago.

Beer Soup: a recipe I have made and loved!

I am not the only one to get hooked. Her comprehensive treatment of the site and each art piece, recipe, and photograph have earned her a lot of well-deserved publicity. If you have not seen her beautiful work, this is what each of these new BlogCrush featurettes is all about: sharing blogs that please and inspire me, in hopes that you might encounter more inspiration and pleasure in your life.

Giorgio Morandi, Still Life (The Blue Vase), 1920
Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 52 cm, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen
[I love Morandi!]

I love the taste of art history included in each post, taking me back to the lecture room in my university's art department where I spent many hours jotting down dates, cultural trends, and questions while viewing projected image after image under dim light.

Currently, Feasting on Art is in the midst of its second annual recipe contest, and I would encourage you to check it out. The topic this year is cheese, based on the painting below.

Floris Gerritsz van Schooten, A Still Life of Cheese, c.1585
oil on oak panel, 39.3 x 55.2 cm, Private collection

I couldn't possibly decline such a challenge with all the hours I spend working behind the counter of my city's fine cheese shop. It will be fun, and there are some great incentives, including the opportunity to win a hardcover copy of the cookbook Food of the Louvre (Musee Du Louvre)!

Note: All photography is by Megan Fizell and used with her permission.

Grow: Creativity Boot Camp

I meant to get on board with this Creativity Boot Camp from day one, but the weekend got away from me and I forgot all about it until my run yesterday morning. By last night I had made it back around to the website and was determine to get down to business. And this is the best sort of "business" I've ever had to do. Yes, it is soul-digging but refreshing and rewarding and worthwhile.



The word for the day was "grow" and the journal prompt was listening to music of your past to conjure up those feelings of deep emotion experienced in younger years, at times of more naivety and/or rawness.

It was perfect timing for me to leap in. I am a music junkie.

I have assigned certain songs or bands to different stages of my life and places I have been. Damien Rice's O and Sixpence None the Richer's Divine Discontent epitomize my senior year of high school. Throw in Brandon Heath's "Small Town Flame" and certain pieces from Les Miserable that I mourned through on the piano and flute, and you have a girl with dreams but concerns about the world's safety in heart matters. Not just in love but in freedom and companionship and the purity of beauty.

To a degree I suppose I still have these ideas and wonderings but with a bit more seasoning. Time has proved both beautiful and tragic in the six years that have passed since I threw my cap in our little school gym and envisioned a life of independence.

I have laid claim to the self-titling of artist. I have trembled with paintbrush in hand, anxiety overwhelming; I have seen brushstrokes moving and colors inspiring beyond my humble inclinations. I have seen brothers marry, friends grow to near-family, and a dad walk out in a way that still sends reverberations. The music and the hope and the dreaming and the loving and the losing have all mixed together and clashed in varying degrees, and I'm left knowing that the best way to move on is to keep sowing beauty. To keep believing Beauty. To keep creating as I was created.

I was reminded of this by the draw to engage in this boot camp, and as I prepared today, one of my favorite bloggers emphasized the notion. A past entry of hers always brings me to tears over the innocent sincerity of this internal desire to re-create that so many of us bear.

I'm participating in this boot camp for me. Because my creative juices need a good, proper uncorking. It's been awfully dry around here. However, a blog is a shared space and I never mean for what I write to be purely selfishly focused. I hope the things I publish in the next week and a half bless and inspire you as I grow and am inspired.

Here's to growth. Here's to the little green fruit I discovered on our tree today in this new yard. It's the tree outside my new window, and I had no idea it was a fruit tree!