bigBANG studio

New Paintingsez

2012-01-27T12:30:00.000-08:00

{Finally, The Work! Plus An Essay!}

Installation View / from left to right: Garden Club and Mountain Series

Garden Club / 96 x 156 in. / acrylic on unstretched canvas / 2012

Slipcover Sky (Hockney's Couch) / 18 x 24 in. / oil on panel / 2011

Brooklandia / 18 x 24 in. / oil on panel / 2012

In Search of XYZ / 18 x 24 in. / oil on panel / 2011

Installation View, East

Installation View, West

Clover for Ajay (Jaipur at Night) / 60 x 72 in. / oil on canvas / 2012

Concord Silhouette / 72 x 60 in. / oil on canvas / 2011

Dandelion / 24 x 18 in. / relief print on handmade Japanese gampi paper (edition of 10) / 2011

Strawberry / 24 x 18 in. / relief print on handmade Japanese gampi paper (edition of 10) / 2011

Relief Print Installation

Ferns with Roots / 12 x 9 in. / oil on panel / 2012

Botanical Label Series Installation / from left to right: The Way We Remember It, Ocean Flowers, Ferns with Roots

Wallpaper Studies / from top to bottom: Sisters II, Trodden Weed, Sisters I

Sisters I / 12 x 9 in. / oil on panel / 2012

The Way We Remember It / 72 x 60 in. / oil on canvas / 2011

Hello muggles. Above, some shots of the new work, which is on view at Anne Reid for another week. Below, an essay I wrote for the show which explains the overarching concept of my recent work. I've also updated my website, which has more shots if you're interested (send me an email for inquiries if something strikes your fancy!). Have a great weekend! I'm going to hear Meg from APW speak about her new book at Barnes & Noble in Park Slope tomorrow- can't W A I T to finally meet the woman behind the magic. See you Monday.

Say It With Flowers
Essay by Lily Stockman
Jan 9 – Feb 2, 2012 | Anne Reid Art Gallery | Princeton, NJ

When I was a a child growing up on our family farm my mother taught me what at the time seemed like a secret, special language, a lexicon as strange and wondrous as the very specimens they described: liverwort, henbane, toadflax, butter-and-eggs, hen-and-chicks, lambsear, cockscomb. This was the language of plants I learned at an early age, a language that electrified my imagination and prompted a life-long love of botany, Latin, geography, and art. My parents’ unusual decorating choices must have had something to do with it, too- our house was filled with 19th century plant art. The walls were a riot of flattened foliage: a floor-to-ceiling botanical study of wild carrot, curious 19th century tin tole paintings of New England plants, faded nature prints of pressed wildflowers in which the skilled hand of some great-great aunt had filled in the ghost image of the petals with watercolor. And so I developed a particularly acute interest not just in plants as they exist in the natural environment, but also a deep curiosity about a century’s-worth of people—mostly women—who tried in so many ways to reproduce, capture, and celebrate the image of plants.

The widespread fad of botanical art in 19th century America and Britain was the result of the unique cultural phenomenon of the amateur naturalist, wherein botany-as-pastime became a valid intellectual and social pursuit for young women. It is important to think of botanical art in the context of its time. Often wives and daughters of the men at the helm of the Industrial Revolution turned their interests not to the factory or city but instead to the field and forest. In the midst of mechanization they sought the quiet study of nature.

As traveling became easier, people suddenly had access to otherwise impassable wilds. The fern craze of the 1850s was a direct result of new roads and railways connecting cities to the rugged, damp western coasts of both America and Britain—and the hundreds of species of previously “undiscovered” ferns—thereby setting off the so-called Pteridomania, the fern frenzy, and the widespread pastime of hunting, collecting, propagating, pressing, drawing and cultivating ferns.

In looking back through 19th century photogenic drawings, cyanotypes, photographs, nature prints, botanical illustrations, silhouette cut-outs, etc. (the list of plant-related image replication goes on and on) in Reconstruction-era America and Victorian Britain, I see a similar cultural shift going on in my tech-savvy Internet generation. They are the after-work naturalists, the amateur botanists, the New Victorians.

As we become more dependent on and saturated with technology, I see a voracious hunger among a stratum of educated, young, urban women to explore the world through quasi-scientific, wholly domestic pursuits: they plant elaborate fire escape vegetable gardens, keep rooftop apiaries to pollinate them, forage for wild edibles in city parks, identify flowers by their most obscure colloquial names and collect them with an artist’s eye and a scientist’s curiosity. They are also avid digital photographers, bloggers and techies; they seem to straddle both worlds. Or maybe it is because they are such technophiles that they are also such devoted naturalists. Technology and botany, it seems, go hand-in-hand: much of their botanical research and documentation takes place in online forums like blogs, Flickr and Tumblr.

And so what does this all mean? The reasons my great-great grandmother collected, identified, and sketched bracken in the Hebrides in 1870 is, I’m willing to argue, not so different from the reasons that I collect, identify and eat wild purslane in Brooklyn here in 2011.What I see in common between these two distinct eras of amateur naturalists is a reaction against the cultural alienation of advancing technology through a gleeful curiosity in the natural world; it is a craving for a tactile, creative “nature experience” that brings us both intellectual and corporal pleasure.

The title of the show—Say It With Flowers—is in itself a pun. We’re all familiar with the saccharine motto; it’s become such a hollow cliché we don’t really contemplate its meaning. But here I employ it without irony and with polyvalent intentions; I really am saying something through flowers, just as my Victorian ancestors did when they pressed ferns between the endsheets of their Bibles and dictionaries. And what I am saying, how I am saying it, is a life-affirming gesture, at once a scientific study and a spiritual statement: it says, I exist in the natural world.

Hedgehawg

2012-01-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

{In Which We Go Back To Work}

The party's over, kids. This morning P. dislodged our truck from street parking entombment and headed back to Massachusetts for Round Two/spring term of graduate school. The doggies are already back with my parents on the farm, and I'm all alone in Brooklyn, sighing melodramatically and considering the heaps and heaps of work I have ahead of me. It's been such a luxury to be a student again and have this long winter break together, and it's probably a good thing that just as we were starting to really settle into our extravagant three weeks of leisure thyme, reality swept in and gave us a quick smackathehead- P. and I both start classes Monday.

As one of my sisters said (as only a sister could say), "it's really annoying that you don't have to go to an office every morning at 8am. Sometimes I have to hate you for it out of principle." Ah, yes, sweet sis. But you have great health insurance and a steady income, and you get to see your significant other any old time. The grass being greener and all that.

Have a great weekend, friends. Pics above from a few days ago: my beloved cousin and her famous sourdough bread, the resulting breakfast of champions, and lazy, lovely doglets, whot I miss *turribly.*

Words Worth Knowing

2012-01-18T08:36:00.000-08:00

{The Sense of an Ending}

On Sunday morning I poured a cup of coffee and cracked the slender spine of Julian Barnes's 2011 Man Booker Prize-winner The Sense of An Ending. I read it in one sitting, and at a compact, piercing 160 pages, I'm sure I'm not alone; one is likely to gobble it up in one forkful if one cottons well to English schoolboy nostalgia, the vexations, yearnings and botched sexual encounters of the young, the pithy meditations on regret of the old, and the best eff-you letter to an ex-lover I've ever read in any work of fiction (page 104).

One of the more minor but worthwhile resolutions I have this year is to read with a pencil, namely, to keep a vocabulary list on the back flyleaf and actually look up those words. I remember swearing once in front of my grandmother when I dropped something, to which she replied, dear, might I suggest your word choice shows a poverty of creativity? I'm sure you can come up with something more original. So here's to better vocabularies in 2012 (and more creative cussin'). Some words I knew but hadn't come across in ages and had to look up, others I'd never heard in my life. And I should probably keep these things to myself, but at each plot twist I kept flipping back to the author photo of Julio with his aristocratic chicken-lips and saying Oh Juuulyan, you crofty bostud! in my head.

The Sense of an Ending Vocab List For Better Cussing:

susurrus | so͝oˈsərəs |
noun, literary
whispering, murmuring, or rustling: the susurrus of the stream.

berk | bəːk |
noun, Brit. informal
a stupid person.

plimsole | ˈplimsəl, -sōl |
noun, Brit.
a light rubber-soled canvas shoe, worn esp. for sports.

lachrymose | ˈlakrəˌmōs, -ˌmōz |
adjective formal or literary
tearful or given to weeping: she was pink-eyed and lachrymose.

impugne | imˈpyo͞on |
verb

dispute the truth, validity, or honesty of (a statement or motive); call into question: the father does not impugn her capacity as a good mother.

deliquescent | deliˈkwesənt |
adjective
becoming liquid or having a tendency to become liquid.

fossicking | ˈfäsik |
verb [ no obj. ] Austral./NZ informal

rummage; search: he spent years fossicking through documents.

lucubations | ˌlo͞ok(y)əˈbrāSHən |

noun formal

study; meditation: after sixteen years' lucubration he produced this account.

priapic | prīˈapik, -ˈāpik |

adjective

of or relating to male sexuality and sexual activity: priapic cartoons.

Show Recap

2012-01-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

{And Thank You}

The opening was a dream. We got a great turn-out, kept the Prosecco flowing, and when my beloved sparkly-eyed kindergarten teacher walked in I nearly fell over. P., who deserves the gold star for being the best unpaid studio assistant in history, along with my sidekick kid sister, mom, parents-in-law, old family friends, childhood hockey teammates, and good-natured strangers eager for a dose of painterly floral immoderation- to all of you who came, THANK YOU!

AND! AND! Three absolutely delightful bloggers came! Amelie and Ariele drove down from Brooklyn and squeezed a little abandoned barn scouting into the trip for Ariele's unbelievably gorgeous salvaged floorboard tables. And Heather and her hubby drove all the way up from BALTIMORE, giddy to have a mini road trip for the fist time since their adorable baby was born. The three of them were so lovely and such sisters-in-arms it only further proved how strong a kinship this network of bloggers truly is, but we already knew that. I'm still pinching myself that all these wonderful people made such herculean efforts to come. Say It With Flowers is up through February 2nd, by the by, if you happen to end up in Dirty Jerz over the next month.

P.S. It doesn't look like much on the hanger, but this hourglass form dress from Anthro is bangin'. How can you possibly say no to a 100% polyester skin-tight retro cut in mustard-ass yellow? For most people that answer is, um, easily, but it's like my fantasy Clue dress; you get to be Miss Scarlet and Colonel Mustard at the same time. Win-win.

Around Here

2012-01-12T10:29:00.000-08:00

{Three Things}

1. We're on a tight budget here at the start of 2012, but damned if I didn't blow $5 on a a bag of luxurious India Tree dark muscovado sugar from Mauritius for our morning coffee. Game-changer, people. P. and the doglets and I haven't all been together in one place since our August Scamp trip, so big mugs of good coffee + early morning off-leash romps in Prospect Park = January bliss.

2. Thank you notes are so much more fun on Leah Giberson's trailer painting stationery, courtesy of my witty sister in law. Nothing says classy like a 1959 canned ham trailer. Speaking of staying classy, I'm slowly making my way through David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I have a bone to pick with you, David Mitchell, and that bone is the four hundred pages of 18th century Dutch sailor jargon you're inflicting upon an otherwise perfectly decent story. Example (say in pirate voice): "Mr. Cutlip, I want the marines to row the longboat, dressed in landsmen's slops, with cutlasses hidden below the thwarts in sackcloth." Aaargh! I mean, SERIOUSLY.

3. One last thing. War Horse: An Illustrated Review is probably the choicest bit of internet nerd genius I've come across all week. It had me giggling all morning, so I emailed it to my mom and then made her put me on speakerphone so I could listen to her laugh while she read it. Horse people are almost as crazy-wonderful as corgi people. But what happens when the horse people are also corgi people? Well, if you come to my show this weekend you get to find out. Look for the heavy drinkers wearing Dansko clogs. (via the marvelous Maggie Shipstead)

So that's the latest in the world of bigBANG. Thanks for the ridiculously sweet, supportive comments about the show. I always want to throw up a little after I press "publish" on posts like that; obviously I don't expect everyone to like my work, but you just hope no one's going to throw rotten e-fruit at you from across the internet. So, anyway, you guys are the best.

Say It With Flowers

2012-01-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

{A Show! In New Joisey!}

installation photos by Grier Stockman

Hi gang! P. and I spent the weekend Testing Our Relationship, which every artist's partner knows goes a little something lika this (sub in your applicable proper nouns): renting a U-Haul in Chelsea (where they might as well take a DNA sample because you practically sign your life away when you rent a cargo van in Manhattan), double-parking in the most congested square block of the East Village, packing and loading several hundred pounds of mostly-but-maybe-not-entirely-dry paintings, and maneuvering down the choked artery of ye olde charming Jersey Turnpike during rush-hour. Whee!

But it was totally worth it (right, husband?). Today my solo show opens in Princeton, and I've been looking forward to this moment for six months. The highlight has been working with an amazing curator whose brilliant installation decisions really make the space come alive; the effect is somewhat of a Martha Stewart garden tour acid trip. Which is exactly what we're going for here, people. I've never been so excited for a show!

The opening reception is this Saturday. If you come I promise to ply you with good wine and fun facts about 19th century botanical art. You get to meet my whacky family, too. Win-win. You'll also get first dibs on my silhouette relief prints on handmade Japanese gampi paper, which the marvelous Kiki Smith helped me pull in the NYU print shop. Shazam.

SAY IT WITH FLOWERS

New Paintings by Lily Stockman

Anne Reid Art Gallery

Princeton, NJ

Opening Reception Saturday, January 14th, 6-8pm

Anne Reid Art Gallery at PDS | 650 Great Road | Princeton, NJ 08540

more details about the show here.

Franconia

2012-01-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

{Nine People, Three Dogs, One Little Prefab & A Sudden Realization}

Thanks for all the incredibly sweet, supportive comments from Monday's post. Speaking of cherishing the time you have with the people (and canines) you love, P. and I recently got back to Brooklyn after a few days with his family at the *rad* old prefab his grandparents built in New Hampshire in the 50s. It's like a good-times sardine can; you can pack a lot of warm bodies in that little house. Armed with a cord of firewood, plenty of wine and a bag of Bananagrams, we had a ball spending some QT with the fam in the woods.

When we arrived with Mac and Dolly and a bag of unwrapped Christmas presents (which we then "wrapped" in newspaper from the kindling bucket and masking tape- it was like an Etsy horror show) I had this sudden realization that P. and I have unwittingly turned into Cousin Catherine and Cousin Eddie from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation- remember the uninvited guests who show up for Christmas with their eyesore RV and dirty kids? Yeah. Have we turned into Crazy Aunt Lily and Ex-Marine Uncle P. with the two shedding dogs and the fiberglass egg trailer? My god, yes. Yes we have.

Aaand, We're Back

2012-01-03T08:10:00.000-08:00

{A Brief Reflection on An Epic Life Well-Lived}

Happy New Year, muggles. A belated Merry Christmas, too. As some of you sweet readers noted bigBANG has been conspicuously silent these past two weeks, and promises of the Anti-Gift Guide Gift Guide went unmet (how about a near-future post called The Awesome Stuff List for Non-Materialists Who Secretly Covet Awesome Stuff?).

The truth of it is the past few weeks have been a blur, and I'm only now coming back up for air. My beloved adoptive grandmother died from complications from breast cancer right before Christmas, and this little blog has taken a back seat to some much-needed, blessed family time. I flew out to Bozeman, Montana to be with her before she died and spent a magical few bedside sessions with her as she regaled me with amusing stories and dictated detailed instructions on how to:

-propagate ferns from spores
-throw a cocktail party for fifty
-look good while riding a camel
-better understand the collapse of Golden Age Holland vis-à-vis the speculative tulip market

If the above abridged list is any indication of her humor, wit and intellect, you can imagine she was an incredible woman. She was an artist in the way she lived her life. And besides my mother she has been the biggest influence on how I have set out trying to live a full life, and I miss her desperately. I know I'm not the only one. So let's raise our glasses to great women: to the mothers, grandmothers and Auntie Mames who have inspired us to lead more adventurous lives. Here's to 2012.

The Makers Project!

2011-12-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

{In Which Jen Causey Works Her Magic}

Hi team! The incredibly lovely Jen Causey recently paid a visit to my studio with her camera, and the ensuing morning was genuinely delightful considering I like having my picture taken about as much as you like ripping off hangnails and plunging your hands in lemon juice. Which is to say Jen is a champ and a real talent. So here we go: Jen's photo essay and interview with yours truly is up on The Makers Project, here.

About The Makers Project- Jen's been documenting the working spaces of Brooklyn-based artists, designers, chefs, metalsmiths, perfumers, ceramicists, and woodworkers for some time now, so if you haven't had the joy of exploring her project, brew a cup and head on over.

Hope you have a great weekend. Stay tuned for the last-minute anti-gift guide bigBANG gift guide, coming as soon as I get my act together. Photos by Jennifer Causey, The Makers Project.

New Paintings

2011-12-09T09:12:00.001-08:00

{And The Last Dustbin You'll Ever Buy}

My "office" feels like a Wardian case these days; getting off the dreary subway and walking into the studio is like entering a Victorian hothouse. The space is small, the roof leaks, and it sounds like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are galloping through the pipes when the radiator gets going, but I really love the place. The north-facing windows make for excellent painting light and ideal houseplant growing, and all those tentacular bromeliads and epiphytes are starting to creep into the paintings:

On another note, P's buddy, Brendan Ravenhill, made a fantastic video of his clever dustbins being fabricated in Los Angeles. Not only is Brendan a design genius (see his Perfect Bottle Opener in my gift guide from two years ago- that thing makes the *best* stocking-stuffer), but he's one of those rare souls who marries New England utilitarianism with a West Coast Mid-Century aesthetic, and that, my friends, appeals to my bicoastal heart most acutely. He's like if Charles Eames had been born a Yankee blacksmith. I'd trade a painting for one of his cord chandeliers in a heartbeat.

Have a great weekend, friends. More of Brendan's work here.

Minimalist Eggs Benny for One

2011-12-06T18:32:00.001-08:00

{Or, Breakfast to Keep the Engine Running}

I wish I could say I spent the weekend hopscotching through all the marvelous holiday craft fairs and sample sales, twirling around Brooklyn sporting a jaunty hat and wool cape, gathering up armloads of green market produce for a wintry stock, but nothing could be farther from the truth. I didn't even get dressed on Saturday, which backfired when I furtively snuck down the stairs of my building to grab the Times (that blue plastic tube-sock of newsprint indulgence!) and an entire bevy of depressingly hip moms ambushed me in the elevator on the way back up. I crossed my arms and pretended I was wearing a bra, and considered whether my ratty L.L. Bean shearling moccasins counted as "shoes."

Whatever. These bills won't pay themselves, and I had piles and piles of computer work to do. I cranked out an essay for an upcoming solo show (so excited! so not ready!) and an overdue article for Kinfolk, and tried to stave off a cold with cup after cup of echinacea tea. But the crowning achievement of my weekend as a shut-in was, if I may be immodest, a particularly delicious salmon and eggs breakfast. It's high protein, low fat, satisfies my Scottish genetic hankering for smoked salmon, and kept me full until the late afternoon. The Meyer lemon is key. Vegans, I beg your forgiveness. Erbody else, read on:

Minimalist Eggs Benny for One

I prefer sustainably-caught *wild* Pacific salmon. Stay away from that antibiotic-infused farmed stuff if you can. Some reasons why, here.

Ingredients:

2 slices fresh whole grain bread, toasted

2 eggs

2 slices smoked Pacific wild salmon

1 small shallot, finely chopped

salt & ground black pepper to taste

generous squeeze of Meyer lemon juice
olive oil

Directions:

Heat small sauce pan on medium for a moment; once hot, coat evenly with smallest amount of olive oil possible while still coating surface of pan. Crack two eggs and let cook until whites are just starting to cook through. Cover for ten to fifteen seconds (no flipping needed). Toast bread in mean time. Remove perfect eggs from pan and place on toast. Yolks can be removed easily if you don't desire them. Crack liberally with salt and pepper. Layer over with thinly-sliced smoked salmon, then cover with shallots. Finally, squeeze lemon over salmon and eat immediately while toast is still warm and crisp. YUM.

Roadside Silhouettes

2011-12-02T11:48:00.001-08:00

{Or, Observations from the Week}

1. The irony of the dramatic death-rattle and irrevocable meltdown of my trusty five-year-old MacBook Pro while working on an article about the importance of periodically unplugging from technology is not lost on me. (On the upside: I am typing this on my new MacBook Air. It is the Shetland pony of computers; it has the kick of a mule packed into a pint-sized body. Shazam, people.)

2. The sound of coffee beans grinding in my Cuisinart food-processor is indistinguishable from the sound of the jackhammer on the street outside my apartment. (Conclusion: a proper coffee grinder might be on the Christmas wish-list this year, before my neighbors go insane.)

3. Stir-frying withered, moldy broccoli does not negate its withered moldiness, nor does it preclude one from the resulting unpleasantries no matter how killer that ginger sesame sauce was. (Reminder: be a functional adult and go grocery shopping right. now.)

Have a lovely weekend. I'll be working away in the studio and can't wait to share some new projects next week. Image above: endsheet from my beloved Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America. Coming upon that spread inside the back cover might just be one of the most exhilarating book discoveries of my animal fact-obsessed childhood.

Breakfast

2011-11-29T12:26:00.001-08:00

{And Getting Down to Business}

This morning here in apartment 4B we are working against the clock on a deadline for an upcoming article for Kinfolk. And by "we" I mean me and WGBH's classical music live stream, which is keeping me excellent company on this drizzly Tuesday. Besides a little Schubert, I think most of you would agree that the first step in rolling up one's sleeves to set about writing is to make an elaborate open-face breakfast sandwich of fried eggs, caramelized onions, farmhouse cheddar and sliced McIntosh apples, topped with a generous stippling of cracked black pepper. Its scores few points for beauty, but I recommend it most heartily as part of one's preparation for a day of writing because it is (was) so outrageously delicious.

And so we are slightly behind schedule, friends, but we are very well-nourished.

Open Studios Recap

2011-11-28T12:05:00.001-08:00

{In Which NYU MFAs Open Their Doors}

An enormous, week-late THANK YOU to those of you who came to Open Studios- it was a total blast meeting readers for the first time and dizzyingly joyful catching up with family and old-but-long-lost friends. We went through an entire case of wine (ENTIRE. CASE. OF WINE.) and five entire Whole Foods pizzas (those things are enormous!) in the first two hours in my studio alone. DAMN. My fellow MFA compadres all had a ball, and save for one wild-eyed dipsomaniac making a run for the door with a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck and an armful of mini Goldfish baglets (the chair of our program aprehended him: priceless), the weekend went off without a hitch. Which, let's be honest, is no small feat considering it was essentially an open house in the heart of the East Village, ground zero for tweakers 'n crazies. So anyway, THANK YOU, all yous, and you know who you are:)

Above, some pictures here and there of strangers, friends, family, and some poorly-lit night-shots of new paintings. Hope you had a marvelous, *restful* T-givs. More soon.

Open Studios This Weekend

2011-11-15T12:20:00.001-08:00

{Come One, Come All}

Hey New Yorkers! Please join me this weekend for NYU Open Studios in the historic Barney Building, in the heart of the East Village. Seven floors of artists' studios, installations, performance & live music on Saturday night, with a mellower evening scheduled for Sunday night. I can promise an excess of art, wine, good company, and free baby Shetland ponies. It's going to be a MAD HOUSE.

COME! More info here.

Vinegar Hill

2011-11-13T19:12:00.001-08:00

{The Perfect Birthday Dinner Aventure, or, Well Done, Team}

HOLY SMOKES. All those incredible recommendations! I researched every last one (thank you! thank you!) and decided Vinegar Hill House would be perfect- we had a get-together for P's Indian scholar buddies at a gallery in that general vicinity in the early evening anyway, so we were happy to take an evening constitutional through the quiet, cobblestone streets of Dumbo in the waning light. And, like movz to a flame, right into the cabinet of high-end curiosities that is Modern Anthology, or, as it should be called, Brooklyn Man-Cave. Worth a trip to their website if you can't make it to the shop. (I realllly wanted to get P. the stuffed ferret with beady lil' buddon eyes and sing the Sredni Vashshar incantation as he unwrapped it, but alas. It seems imprudent to spend one's precious pocket money on second-hand dead pets when you have two perfectly good live ones waiting for you back on the farm.)

And then off to dinner: up the little alleys past the Japanese import warehouses, past the ConEd substation plant, past the old smoke stacks and the surprise burg of 19th century Federal style row houses, and around the corner to the darling, pitch-perfect, sycamore-ensconced Vinegar Hill House, which did not disappoint. The fare was simple, seasonal, perfectly executed and delicious. We arrived as the doors opened (as did about twenty other people- this place gets packed early!) and nestled down in the corner. Our lovely waitress took her time but in the best way possible; the meal was languorous, romantic, a haze of flickering candlelight and laughter -that spectacular passage from Brideshead Revisted comes to mind when Sebastian and Charles drink all that red wine- a magical night, indeed. Happy birthday, darling.

Thank you for the *most* fabulous recommendations all around! And stay tuned for fun bigBANG newzes this week...

Question

2011-11-11T09:56:00.001-08:00

{Wanted: Live Flames & Toothsome Vittles}

Happy Veteran's Day! Speaking of veterans, any particularly marvelous restaurants you kids might suggest for a certain hubster's birthday this weekend? This time last year we celebrated P's birthday around a bonfire with our ragtag Fulbright family in a tiny hilltop village in the foothills of the Himalayas. There were sparklers, an A-for-effort Indian cake, and a giant kettle on the fire for the making of hot toddies. Pretty tough to beat, so I'd love to pool your collective wisdom for a recommendation for this year's moveable feast. He is a voracious, inquisitive, educated and deeply passionate eater, this one, so the bar is set high. The stipulations:

-unusually toothsome vittles (I mean pound-the-table-with-your-fist delicious)
-live flames a real plus (on candles, in fireplaces, from beneath cauldrons, etc.)
-delicate house-made pumpkin ravioli always a good sign; same goes for anything with wood sorrel
-an abundance of heritage breeds of cute, dead farm animals to choose from is appealing
-maybe let's keep the list just to Brooklyn?

Thoughts? In other news, I'm almost finished with The Marriage Plot and can't even bear the thought of it being over. It's deeply satisfying on so many levels- more soon. Have a great weekend, team! Pics above from the studio this week. The afternoon light has been glorious.

Calcutta, Kolkata

2011-11-09T17:06:00.000-08:00

{January, 2011}

"He'd spent his first week in the city exploring. He'd attended mass at an Anglican church with a gaping hole in the roof and a congregation of six octogenarians. At a Communist playhouse, he'd sat through a three-hour production of Mother Courage in Bengali. He'd walked up and down Chowringhee Road, past astologers reading faded Tarot cards and barbers cutting hair while squatting at the curb. A street vendor had summoned Mitchell over to look at his wares: a pair of prescription eyeglasses and a used toothbrush. The uninstalled sewer pipe in the road was big enough for a family to camp inside. At the Bank of India, the businessman in front of Mitchell in line was wearing a solar-powered wristwatch. The policemen directing traffic were as expressive as Toscanini. The cows were skinny and wore eye makeup, like fashion models. Everything Mitchell saw, tasted, or smelled was different from what he was used to."

From Jeffrey Eugenides' new novel The Marriage Plot. Go out and buy it in hardcover right. now.

Dia:Beacon

2011-11-07T12:15:00.000-08:00

{Or, Let's Move to Beacon and Have Chickens}

You GUYS. We finally made it up to Dia:Beacon, an old Nabisco box-printing factory on the Hudson River transformed into a temple of Mostly American Minimalist Art. All caps. The room upon room of Agnes Martin paintings filled my brain with quiet as my body radiated laser beams of love; sitting with those paintings is something akin to a religious experience. Natural sunlight poured in through the ceiling windows overhead as we wandered through the cavernous Robert Ryman rooms (white upon white upon white!), giddy with the muchness of it all. A rush of good will for my fellow man flooded my heart as we maundered through the old loading docks where Richard Serra's behemoth steel curvatures -like enormous strips of industrialized whale fat- transformed the space into something magical, transporting, existential. Something human.

Not quite ready to leave, we lingered; P. had a cup of coffee while I fondled all the books in the ridiculously comprehensive book store (and finally decided on Dia's excellent new book on our gal Agnes, patron saint of the desert). After an especially toothsome sandwich along the adorable main street in town and a wander down to the river to catch our train -mapled hillsides ablaze in the afternoon light- I thought, hmm, this place is *very* special.

Well we live in Beacon but we have a winter place in Joshua Tree, I whispered to no one in particular on the goldeny Hudsony train ride home.

In the Studio

2011-10-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

{A Sneak Peek}

Some shots from the studio. I'm working on some bigass paintings of botanical specimens right now, and I've been geeking out over the work of Anna Atkins, a 19th-century botanist and photographer and the first person to publish a book of photographs (she's getting added to the guest list for my fantasy Dinner Party for Dead People. She'd put Ernst Haeckel in his place over an aspic of sea urchin, fo sho). Atkins is famous for her stunning cyanotypes of British seaweed, kelp and oceanic plants, which are so ethereal and beautiful and contemporary I always have to gasp and sigh when I look at them. I'm taking a printmaking class with Kiki Smith and Valerie Hammond right now (!) and their infectious passion for Victorian imagery seems to be creeping into my painting practice. This is FUN STUFF, kittens.

Have a marvelous weekend. I'm headed up to Boston to see the hubs, where they say it is going to SNOW on Saturday. I say don't be ridiculous.

Footwear for Menfolk

2011-10-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

{In Search of The Perfect Man Shoes}

On the docket for the the weekend: finding hubs a new pair of Man Shoes. He's trodden the earth for the past two years in a beloved pair of rugged, handsome, and practical Timberland Earthkeeper boots, which he loves for sensible reasons and I love for aesthetic ones. They are the perfect Man Boot. P. also has a pair of very abused, very awesome desert combat boots, from that time he spent doing deserty, combaty things. But P. is a now a Civilian, a Professional, a Grownup, getting Two Simultaneous Graduate Degrees. He can't wear Man Boots to class every day, people (well, he could, and he does, but we're trying to avoid that). Hence the search for the perfect Man Shoe. Stipulations: must be attractive enough to pass sartorial muster, practical enough to change a tire in, and comfortable enough to walk in all the livelongday.

And so, the journey begins at Brooklyn Circus, where Harlem Renaissance dandy style meets a 1950s New England duck hunter's closet, plus a few devastatingly beautiful vintage bomber jackets and a collection of rare books- the place is to DIE for. But P. does not go for the navy-and-cream saddle shoes. So on to Epaulet: beautifully-tailored classics, all handmade in the US. All handmade in the US for people with quads the size of asparagus stalks and feet the width of free-range quail cutlets. So we ended up at Smith + Butler, a fantasia of rugged outerwear, luxurious woolens, and a vague reverence for early American motorcycle culture. There is an artful display of wooden target arrows, a profusion of heavy flannel, the smell of saddle leather. (This whole Urban Woodsman style is rawther amusing to two urbanites who actually do know their way around a pole ax and a shotgun, but I'm not complaining; it's Very Attractive.) All three stores, absolutely beautiful. All their clothes, absolutely beyond the budget of grad school students. However, at Smith + Butler we found Man Shoes he liked. Man Shoes we could afford.

The top contenders: Squaw Valley moc-boots by SeaVees which were redundant but beautiful (someone get these for their fella for the holidays, please), SeaVees around-town suede ankle-mocs, which look rad, I promise, with pants, and the can't-go-wrong, always-classic Clark's desert boots in beeswax. Which is what homeboy ended up with. And because I was such a good winglady I got treated to a post-shopping date with a seat in front of a fireplace and a glass of the best hot mulled wine I've had outside my mother's kitchen. Did you guys get that? FIREPLACE. HOT MULLED WINE. At Black Mountain Winehouse, in Gowanus. Which will be my go-to perch henceforth, 'til the Gowanus canal explodes in a fiery, toxic boom.

And so. All in all a weekend of exuberant pecuniary and gastronomic consumption. Shazam.

Weekend Q & A

2011-10-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

{And Brooklyn's Best Latte}

Weekend Q & A, You Decide Who's Who:

Q: Can we go on the fire escape to watch the "sunset?"
A: That would be such a horrible way to die. It's so rickety-looking. You go first.

Q: Buttercup, can you bring me my beer please?
A: Move over, I'm joining you. And you have GOT to try this cheese.

Q: Is that a mammalian tail sticking out of that crack in the wall?!
A: Squirrelz!

Q: Do people on your blog think I only wear that one shirt?
A: Silence.

Q: Can we go to bed early tonight? I'm averaging five hours per night for two weeks.
A: I thought you'd never ask. Ima polish off that cheese plate first.

Q: It'd be lame if we watched Law & Order on my laptop in bed, right?
A: Yes. Get your laptop. And only because I already finished season one of Downton Abbey.

Q: Do other people listen to Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me while making soup on Saturday mornings?
A: Your cousin and her bf listen to Wait Wait when they make sourdough and they're totally hip cats.

Q: Are we like old people?
A: No, we're like the New Young People whot like Old People Things.

Q: How could a latte possibly be that expensive? That's more expensive than a rickshaw drive across Delhi. It's criminal.
A: I know, but you have to try this sh*t. The Aussies call it a flat white, but I call it magic.

Q: When can we just hang out and not worry about stuff like you making your bus back to Boston?
A: Sigh. I don't know, but I love you. Have a sip of this amazing latte.

A wonderful Brooklyn weekend, albeit fleeting. And Cafe Grumpy does indeed make the best latte I've ever had. Tiny, minimalist, no wi-fi or much seating, but damn, do they know what they're doing when it comes to coffee. A real treat. Also treaty? Maggie Smith in season one of Downton Abbey (which you can also stream on Netflix). She is TO. DIE. FOR.

Old Dogs Teach New Tricks

2011-10-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

{The Farm in Fall}

Last night on the way out of the studio at 1am a drunk frat boy asked me if a) I was Russian and b) where the kimchi taco truck went; this morning I chatted with a woman wearing her four-foot-long pet iguana like a mink stole; this afternoon a little gay Japanese man in a purple cravat giggled the entire time he administered my head massage before cutting my bangs. Seriously, if one is a collector of Strange & Wondrous Human Interactions, then the past 24 hours have been a success. New York is good like that. New York is good, in general. Excellent, even.

However. This past weekend on the farm, while taking an evening walk alone with our 14-year-old, cataract-clouded family dog, I had a realization. Nellie was trotting alongside me, completely deaf and nearly blind to the world but blissfully following a scent, vibrant in her old age and feeling spry in the waning autumn sun. There are few things sweeter than an old dog enjoying her evening patrol, and I'd like to think I'll have some quiet, lovely place to patrol for myself when I'm deaf and blind but still shuffling around, arm in arm with my sweetheart. A little plot of land in which to shuffle, let's say. It is this way: I'll always be a country mouse with periodic city inclinations. And probably not the other way around.

Unrelated, but also: a 65-pound spotted lapdog whot decides the tiny space between P. and his armrest is the *only* reasonable place to go to sleep. In the midst of a wine-inspired game of dictionary, no less. That's a good thing, too. Excellent, even.

For Cider, For Hogs

2011-10-11T10:03:00.000-07:00

{Apple Season on the Farm}

It's apple season! We spent the weekend down on the farm enjoying the ridiculously marvelous weather whilst stuffing ourselves with the autumn jewels of the orchard: Jersey Black apples. Our apples are 100% organic, which is a fancy way of saying we don't do a damn thing to our crop cept prune the trees in winter and hope for the best come fall. It's organic by default of laziness, really. And although they look pretty gnarly off the tree, a light scrub in the sink with an abrasive sponge and all the superficial spots come right off and our apples look just as rosy and smooth-skinned as the ones from the commercial orchard down the road. Not that it matters- it's the flavor we're after here, people, and our apples this year are pretty damn delicious: marvelously sweet, just tart enough, and incredibly crisp (they make that mouth-watering POP! when you bite into them).

Quick history lesson: Jersey Blacks are a historic variety favored by early German settlers in this area for, first and foremost, hard cider, and second, pie-baking/eating/fattening up hogs. Now that's an apple I can get behind. We don't have any hogs, but we're pretty sure that porcine Mac did eat his weight in apples throughout the course of the weekend. Such a sneaky little truffle-snuffling weasel-pig, that Biscuit-dog. Hope you had a relaxing weekend. I may have this favorite French apple tart in my near future.

PS1 + Stiff Drinks

2011-10-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

{Plus a Surprise Visit from Our Favorite Four-Legged Biscuit}

Tromped through the puddles to the New York Art Book Fair at PS1, where we also caught the excellent 9/11 show (it's not quite what you think. definitely worth seeing). An Airstream-turned-bookstore won our admiration, but the suspendered fellow playing ragtime on the piano down the road at the Manhattan Inn, in Greenpoint, stole our hearts (the peeling pressed-tin roof, enormous rain-sparkling skylight, stupendous burgers with sprouts, reclaimed wood paneling and neighborhood vibe helped, too). On Sunday my mom and dad came into Brooklyn for the Extended Birthday Spectacular for said dearest mummy (who is the sunshine in our lives) where I delivered on the promise of the Best Birthday BLT: house-cured upstate bacon, baby watercress and last-chance heirloom tomatos on just-out-of-the-oven bread at Applewood, a darling little spot in my neighborhood in Park Slope. And the best surprise of all? Mom and Pops brought a certain beloved little corgi in for the day, which filled my (and P's, and, apparently, Mac's) heart with so much joy for those few hours that when it came time to say goodbye, he started whining and I got all lump-throated. It's become abundantly clear that with my 12-, sometimes 16-hour days in the studio Mac and Dolly are much, much better off at the farm for now. Big sigh. P. always says you can have anything you want in life, but just not all at the same time. Cept when it comes to bacon-chocolate bars. You can totally have your bacon and chocolate at the same time. Thank *goodness.*

Rostam Does Tabla

2011-09-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

{A Subcontinental Sound for Fall}

One of the ways the diaspora of Stockman sisters stays in touch is through subjectless emails with links to outstanding if obscure music, followed by articulate, insightful, sisterly notes like OMG LISTEN NOW SOOO GOOD. Sometimes they include punctuation, like DOWNLOAD NOW, WENCHES. What with one sister studying in London, one working in Salvador, Brazil, and one firmly planted in San Francisco, we are all devouring music of completely different cultural terroir, if you will, which makes the music emails that much more exciting. And the latest one from the San Fran sis knocked it out of the park. Like that chain-smoking preppy kid in your Modern American Poetry seminar who was vaguely dismissive, stunningly precocious and annoyingly brilliant, Vampire Weekend irks. But this little tabla-infused wonder from Rostam Batmanglij is, sigh, gorgeous. Makes me smile as soon as the tabla beat starts up; oh India, you crazy beast, do I miss you already? Anyway, consider this your panmusical song for fall, courtesy of bigBANG's little sister.

Have a great weekend. Images from our trip to visit a friend in Benares/Varanasi, holy city on the Ganges. Still have lots of India posts ahead, if anyone is game. Game?

Brooklyn General Store

2011-09-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

{For All Your Knitting Needs}

Let's make a list of items integral to the essence of a great small town general store:

- baling twine
- tinctures
- surly postmistress
- pickled eggs
- live baby animals on a seasonal basis
- fishing lures

So the magical Brooklyn General Store doesn't have any of that stuff, but they do have an outstanding selection of sewing and knitting materials, vintage ribbon on wooden spools, natural pigment dying kits and an unbelievable assortment of sumptuous yarn. And all at more reasonable prices than most of the yarn shops I've visited in Manhattan. Totally worth the bike ride over there for all your knitting needs. Totes magotes.

Park Slope Shuffle

2011-09-27T15:36:00.000-07:00

{In Which The Neighborhood Gets Explored + Save Landreth Seed!}

Spent Saturday afternoon walking alone, camera in hand, throughout greater Park Slope. Just to see what I could see, finally explore my new neighborhood. And maybe conduct a little benign trespassing in an effort to admire front-stoop pots of sweet potato vine, fire escape herb gardens and one particularly lovely abandoned lot featuring variegated ivy, chamomile and cardboard (which would be the *perfect* urban home for a certain Scamp, which, by the way, you all have vehemently convinced us not to sell for the time being). I also figured out that if one goes to the green market at the very end, when everyone's packing up the last bruised apples and picked-over fennel bulbs before heading upstate, one might just come home with a bag of free produce if one isn't fussy about mold/rot/wormholes. Which, in this case, one is not.

Hope you had a fine weekend. And thanks to several of you whip-smart, fact-checking, follow-upping readers, it's come to my attention that the beloved D. Landreth Seed Company, America's oldest seed house, is about this close to shutting down. Read here. I'll go ahead and put in a little plug for purchasing their gorgeous $5 catalogue, if not an entire crate of dahlia tubers, or anything from their incredible African American Heritage Collection of heirloom vegetable seeds (the Cherokee purple tomats are our FLAVORITE). Here's hoping you hang on, Landreth!

Free Fings

2011-09-23T22:28:00.000-07:00

{Catching Up and Three Things Worth Sharing}

Tonight was the first night I left the studio before 11pm all week, and I can't wait to take tomorrow (or at least tomorrow morning) off to catch up on fundamental things like, oh, laundry, grocery shopping and maybe even making a meal that involves the use of a heating element. Thinking back to our nights out at Pappy's and community feasts in Joshua Tree is enough to usher forth a melodramatic sigh of despair and longing from yours truly; will P. and I ever have that kind of life again? (Damn straight she said as she went to her tiny Brooklyn cupboard for the big bottle of Tennessee bourbon.) But that's a post for another time. Now, here, in the very present tense, I've been sucked down a vortex called grad school, which is a great luxury, really, but hot damn am I excited to spelunk my way out of the studio and catch up on real life this weekend. The highlight of the week, by the way, was a studio visit with Anoka Faruqee on Thursday; I was beyond thrilled to learn that our homeboy Ernst Haeckel (see last post) is a major source of inspiration behind her work, too, which I never would have intuited, but which made me understand and appreciate her paintings all the more.

In other news:
Cannot *wait* until Feist's new album is out. Been listening to this preview on repeat.
Came across this portrait of Luc Tuymans in his studio. Perfection, all around.
Giggled out loud reading this, um, "essay" on fall/decorative gourd season (courtesy of the amazing Maggie Shipstead).

Have a great weekend. Above, a simplified dresser top: Ganesh and bangles from our travels in India; necklace from my sister, antique mirror from Russia, painting by Tina Bluefield, which P. gave me as a Christmas present our first winter in the desert.

Ryan & Ernst

2011-09-19T13:17:00.000-07:00

{Or, I Saw Drive and It Was Amazing + Some Sicknasty 19th Century Zoological Prints}

1. P. came down to New York this past weekend, and we tried to maximize every last ounce of time together via one cousin's post-elopement party, meeting another cousin's new baby girl, kitchen-muddled Old Fashions at 3am with yet another cousin, and going to the talkies just the twozuvuss, where we saw Drive. And my gawd, it was so unbelievably cool. I can't believe I'm saying an off-beat car chase movie might be the best film I'm seen all year, but, really. Think John Ford classic western re-imagined as Miami Vice but set in contemporary downtown LA with a pitch-perfect cast and a few staggering moments of Tarantinoesque gore. If that sounds like your cup of tea then I'd say don't read the reviews and don't watch the trailer, just go see it in a packed theater late at night with a film geek friend/lover and an open mind (and it *is* the kind of movie you want to see in a packed theater- the energy and ocasional input from the crowd totally made the experience). It's a slick, gorgeous and unexpectedly satisfying little film, and the music is perfection; try this and this. And report back; I'm eager to hear if other peeps loved it as much as I did. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for old cars and 80s soundtracks.

2. I spent the better part of Sunday working in the studio, where I got all fired up poring through Ernst Haeckel's incredible prints from Art Forms in Nature. For those of you new to the strange and wondrous world of Haeckel, let's go over the facts: German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor, artist, mountain climber and the greatest proponent of evolutionary theory in late-19th century mainland Europe. He also discovered and described thousands of new species in his vast travels, mapped a genealogical tree connecting all forms of life and had a soft spot for sponges. I'm totally adding him to my all-time greatest dinner party guest list of dead people. He can sit right next to Gertrude Bell. And we'll all watch Drive after digestifs and discuss.

Hope you had a good weekend. Real life is getting in the way of blog life it seems, so bear with me with these sporadic posts until I get the swing of things.

Sunday Morning, Cambridge

2011-09-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

{Ten Years Later}

Sunday morning woke us up with dappled sunshine on our eyelids, full of promise, full of September Sundayness. Belying the awful reality of the date, the memory, the old ache a fresh wound of sorrow as we turned on the television. We watched, tears streaming (who couldn't? who didn't?), and held our heads. Still, a decade later, such unintelligible loss, but also, also this: so much hope, resilience, pride and love. We made our way outside into the sunshine, and found ourselves driving past my old apartment above the laundromat on Kirkland Street. Next to the butcher's. Where I lived with three beloved roommates and Mac the corgi, where I cooked my first and last Christmas goose, where I fell in love with P. Seems like so long ago, I said as we rumbled by. It was after 9/11, but before P's first tour in Iraq. Long and not-long.

We made our way to The Biscuit for lattes, warm baked things and the company of strangers. We're so lucky, you and I, he said. We counted our blessings, lingered, and finally it was time to board my bus back to Brooklyn, back to New York.

Catskilled

2011-09-06T14:21:00.000-07:00

{Ostriches, Aliens and the Comfort of Pasta}

Summer ended in the Catskills. We left the city behind and drove north through the rolling hills to a farmhouse-turned-artists-space for a night of camping and "arting," as P. calls it. We tromped around the goldenrod looking at installations, met some lovely people, enjoyed a group exhibition and marveled at a field of grazing ostriches (also, dromedaries, llamas and sheep). Things turned Kubrickian later that night when we walked up a dark country road to what can only be described as a pagan variety show hosted in a church-turned-performance space called -wait for it- Church of the Little Green Man. Which made a night out in Joshua Tree look like an Amish quilting bee. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

P. left Sunday to make his way back north to Boston. Instead of wallowing in self-pity and listening to Emmylou Harris I went for a run. And then promptly came home, put on Chopin's cure-all nocturnes* and comforted myself the best way I know how, in the form of a bowl of fresh butternut squash ravioli. Which was, as anticipated, utterly, perfectly, devastatingly delicious. And just like that, it was fall.

*Listen to my favorite Rubinstein recording here. Happy fall everyone.

Brook Land

2011-09-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

{In Which This Blogger Finally Really Moves to Brooklyn}

Two items for class today:

1. I finally actually really moved into our Brooklyn apartment for good. And I'm showing you pictures from our first day in the place, before we'd unfurled the rug, organized the bookcases and properly hung the paintings. The place still isn't exactly photo-ready, but I'm crazy-happy here and thought I'd show the pictures anyway, because aren't we all a little bored with the perfectly executed, expertly styled, industrial-desert-minimalist je ne sais quoi you always see in Dwell? No? Yeah, me neither, but here's my new place and I love it and I'm showing it to you because we're pals.

2. There's a great aside in Patti Smith's exquisite Just Kids (which is exceedingly beautiful, if heartbreaking and mildly frustrating- call me old-fashioned, but Patti, o Patti, WHY YOU GOTTA KEEP SLEEPING WITH A DRUG-ADDLED TRENCH-MOUTHED HUSTLER? There, I said it. Someone had to say it.) in which she returns to her New York apartment after a trip to Paris to find that her landlord has pawned off or stolen most of her belongings. To which she unsentimentally replies: there's always new stuff, that's for sure.

2a. I read and re-read that line when we were living out of a suitcase in Jaipur and announced to P. that I was getting rid of all non-essential, surface-cluttering, unused and unproductive stuff when we moved back to the States. Now, almost six months later in Brooklyn, I can happily say we purged about a third of all our belongings. I gave away all the clothes I haven't worn in two years. We sold or donated a lot of our Joshua Tree furniture to people who could really use, say, a pair of killer mid-century patio chairs in sea-foam green. We sold our old Jeep. We *might* even sell the Scamp (insert long complicated sigh here). We still have more books than we can shake a stick at and I couldn't stand to part with my illustrious collection of found raptor feathers, but we're making progress on the stuff front. Slow but real progress. And it feels pretty cathartic to start a new chapter of our lives with less *stuff.* Happy fall, urbody.

Hope you have a great long weekend. Would love to hear how other people manage the shedding of collected, sometimes beloved, but always, ultimately, non-essential stuff.

Molasses-Roasted Fig Salad with Arugula, Early Pears & Chèvre

2011-08-30T19:17:00.000-07:00

{Or, What We Ate After the Storm}

I'm not going to tell you all the reprehensible things I uttered while trying, in vain, to get our antique generator started during the past three days of Hurricane Irene-inflicted power outage. I'm not going to tell you about bailing out the basement water by hand, slipping in the dark in my stupid rubber boots and falling one flight of stairs into six inches of basement flood-sludge. Or the bad corgi who went *swimming* in the six inches of basement flood-sludge just for corgyn kicks. Instead I'm going to tell you about this really killer salad my sisters and I made tonight with what was left over from the spoils of the fridge, because there's nothing like roasted figs (or a stiff drink) to make a grump feel chipper again.

Fact: figs are in season here in the Northeast. Fact: Irene blew down our beloved, ancient, hybridized some-sort-of-Asian pear tree, which was laden with fruit and a mere week away from being ripe for the picking (I cry. I cry). Fact: goat cheese, surprisingly, lasts a lot longer than you'd think without adequate refrigeration (I know you think that's gross/dangerous, but you should see the Mongolians and their gleeful consumption of non-refrigerated dairy products). Sounds like the beginning of a beautiful salad, right? And tonight, it was just what the doctor ordered: roasting the figs in molasses, cider vinegar and olive oil makes me weep it's so decadent, and you can't go wrong with baby arugula (unless you're one of those people who Doesn't Like Arugula and Doesn't Want to Talk About It). Thinly sliced sweet Asian pears ("early" pears in our case) give the salad a satisfying, jicama-like crunch, and the goat cheese rounds out all the flavors with a tangy zing. Yum, people. Try it out, don't be fussy with measurements, and give it your own twist. Then report back so we can gush about roasted figs together.

Molasses-Roasted Fig Salad with Arugula, Early Pears & Chèvre
Like most of my favorite meals, this really doesn't require exact measurements; taste as you go and trust your instincts. As for figs: you can't go wrong with black mission figs for gentle sweetness, but brown turkeys are a close second. And you lucky ducklings on the West Coast (and beyond) have plenty other marvelous varietals to choose from. This salad will feed three to four people.

Ingredients:
1+ tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons blackstrap molasses
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
cracked black pepper to taste
12 ripe figs, quartered
2 medium-sized Asian pears, peeled and thinly sliced
arugula (also called rocket in some places)
1+ teaspoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon good orange juice

Directions:
Heat oven to 425. In a large bowl, beat first four ingredients with a whisk. Add figs, turning over gently to mix with liquid. With a thin slotted spoon, transfer figs to oiled, rimmed baking sheet, reserving liquid in bowl, and bake about ten minutes, or until juices around figs begin to caramelize.

While figs roast, slice pears (I put slices in a small bowl of cold water to keep them from browning). Add brown sugar and orange juice to bowl of reserved liquid, plus a crack or two or salt and pepper if desired, and whisk again. Remove figs from oven and set aside to cool; immediately add liquid from bowl to hot baking sheet and whisk in brown caramelized bits stuck to pan. Pour back into bowl and season to taste; that's your vinaigrette. If eating immediately, toss arugula with vinaigrette and arrange in center of white plate. Top with figs, followed by crumbled chèvre, and rim with pears. For appealing presentation, drizzle last dregs of vinaigrette over pears, and crack entire plate with black pepper. Voilà, my dear salad-lovers. Voilà. Hope you all survived the hurricane none the worse for wear.

Dahlias! Dahlias!

2011-08-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

{A Late-Summer Garden Celebrity, Plus A Few Paintings Whot Match}

I'm home on the farm for two days to take care of the animals while my parents go on a belated 30th wedding anniversary motorcycle trip across Utah/Idaho/Montana/Wyoming. (My dad hopes they'll be camping in the wilderness. My mom hopes they'll be staying at the Four Seasons. We four daughters are ve-ry curious to see how this all pans out.)

And so I did what every responsible oldest child does while house-sitting and raided the overgrown garden for my favorite late-summer treasures: dahlias. Every year for Christmas I give my mom a new dahlia tuber from the D. Landreth Seed Company, and I'm not sure who gets more joy out the arrangement, me or mom. This time last summer, when I was freshly transplanted to India and a world away from her garden, my mom sent me pictures from her iPhone each time a new dahlia bloomed. I'd be lying if I said I didn't get little mother-daughter-flower tears of homesick-garden-love when I opened up those precious emails. Needless to say, for romantics with a propensity for period dramas and a soft-spot for Edith Wharton, dahlias, with their dinner-plate-sized petticoats and lavish ruffles, are pretty much the cat's pajamas. And a word about Landreth Seeds: their website could use an overhaul, but don't be fooled; they are the BEST. The. Best. The oldest heirloom seed company in America, they've been selling the most luxurious seeds, bulbs, tubers and corms since 1784. And if you actually call them, a little old lady will answer all your dahlia questions and then some. You will hang up the phone elated, and then you will promptly forget about the whole thing until a marvelous little box of humble dahlia tubers arrives in early spring. Then you plant them and wait patiently, maybe forget about them entirely (this is an ongoing theme in our house, the forgetting of dahlias), until late August rolls around and BOOM! Suddenly you have filigreed color-bombs exploding all over the place like a garden game of holi. Ours, above, fell victim to a host of voracious slugs before I rescued them, but still. They make my heart swell just looking at them. Some favorites: Kogana Fubuki, Firepot and Clara Huston.

P.S. Those paintings pictured above are the last pieces available from my Indian grain silo series. If you're interested, email me for details! Some recent happy customers: Lisa from Privilege, here, and Meg from A Practical Wedding, here. A humbled, delighted thanks, ladies!

Perfect Heirloom Tomato Sandwich

2011-08-22T12:02:00.000-07:00

{The Ultimate Minimalist Summer Snack}

Now that tomatoes are finally at their zenith here in the northeast, P. and I have been indulging in an old-fashioned, can't-be-improved-upon classic: just-off-the-vine tomato sandwiches. This year on the farm we have a smorgasbord of marvelous heirloom varieties and rainbow cultivars with names almost as colorful as their flesh, like Cherokee purple, Brandywine, black krim, green zebra, Mr. Stripy- the list goes on and on (as do the garden pests that have discovered these ripening beauties, but never mind).

The key to a memorable tomato sandwich is, of course, locally-grown, just-picked tomats (i.e. forget the ethylene-ripened ones from the grocery store) and really good bread. After making these puppies probably a dozen times over the past two weeks I decided thinly-sliced rye from our local bakery is the way to go, but a bosomy sourdough boule is a close second. Good ole' Hellmann's mayonnaise (or Best Foods if you're west of the Rockies) adds a hint of lemony sweetness that subtly boosts the flavor of the tomatoes, and don't be shy with the salt and pepper. (Fleur de sel, although pricey, is absolutely worth the investment; you wouldn't put diesel fuel in a Ferrari, so why put cheapo table salt on your heirloom tomatoes. Am I right? I'm right.) I know this is incredibly simple, but DAMN, I wouldn't waste your time if it weren't worth sharing. So go forth, get thee some Brandywines, and maketh this sandwich.

Perfect Heirloom Tomato Sandwich
Let late-summer heirloom tomatoes steal the show, but be generous with the salt and pepper. Eat while the toast is still warm.

Ingredients:
ripe heirloom tomatoes
fresh bread, thinly sliced and lightly toasted (I love rye or sourdough for this sandwich)
good mayonnaise (Hellmann's or Best Foods, or if you make your own all the power to you)
freshly-ground black pepper
fleur de sel (or other fancy finishing salt)

Directions:
While bread toasts, slice tomatoes. Spread mayonnaise thinly over both pieces of bread, layer one side with tomato slices, sprinkle abundantly with salt and pepper. Top with second slice of bread, cut in half. Serve immediately. Bon Appétit!

Dog vs. Llama

2011-08-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

{In Which We Visit Friends on A Farm in New Hampshire}

We needed a shower. And an opportunity to finally settle a long-standing debate: in Celebrity Deathmatch Corgi vs. Llama, who would win? So we cruised across the Vermont border into New Hampshire to the farm of P's longtime family friends, who are in possession of both showers and llamas. P. has told me countless stories about visiting the farm when he was a wee lad, and as we explored the old cow barn and the nooks and crannies of the ells and sheds, I could just imagine a ten-year-old, tow-headed P. jumping from a rope swing into heaps of loose hay. I not-so-subtly coveted the resident chickens, and as we pulled the Scamp out of the driveway, sorry to leave but eastward-bound, we were given two eggs as a parting gift. That night we built a little campfire somewhere in southern New Hampshire, finished off the wine and fried up the farm eggs. The Scamp still smelled like hay. Like New England, like summer. I fell asleep dreaming of Rhode Island reds, barred rocks and banties.

And oh, corgi vs. llama was a draw; Mac has herding skills and cunning, but llamas have serious attitude and scimitar-like hooves and we intervened before they made a trampled snausage out of him. Totally the best day of his little corgyn summer though. I've never seen an old dog so happy.

There Sleeps Titania

2011-08-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

{Vermont Woods via Scamp}

If the National Park system is a big, rule-enforcing, highly-organized Catholic school with a strict curriculum, then the Forest Service is Montessori: there are very few rules, and as long as one plays well with others and doesn't litter, one is pretty much free to do whatever she pleases. This all makes for very good Scamping, so P, Mac, the Hound of Love and I sped north to Vermont's birchy, beechy, old-growth Green Mountain National Forest, chugged down an old logging road for thirty miles and, just as dark was setting in, found an idyllic, mossy clearing next to a stream. We unhitched the Scamp and rolled her into a majestic little spot overlooking a series of small cascades (made of fiberglass, she weighs less than a mule and can be maneuvered by hand by two idiots in flip-flops). We heated up two cans of Amy's organic soup on the Scamp stove, opened a bottle of excellent Côtes du Rhône, made up the bed with crisp ironed sheets and fell asleep to a chorus of sylvan trills and chirrups, the rush of mountain water over granite stone. In Scamplandia, one can live large while living small, it seems.

Ours must have been the very spot Oberon described in A Midsummer Night's Dream; see midpage, here.

Busy on the Farm

2011-08-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

{In Which We Pick Chard, Tie Paintings Up with String, Roll Out the Scamp}

It's been a happily productive week of shipping off paintings, tying up loose ends and gearing up for a long-awaited Scamp trip. And, let's be honest, spending a shameful amount of time each morning in the thicket of our fennel looking for swallowtail chrysalises when I should be doing a dozen more important things like getting new tires or deciphering my health insurance plan from NYU. Time seems to be compressing, closing in, pointing its knobby finger at me and warning September is right around the corner, but I'm drawing this blissful time out as long as possible before P. and launch into our autumn of apartness and Big Unknowns.

Compared to last year's epic five-thousand mile Scamp trip across the country this little end-of-summer jaunt is but a blip on the map, but potentially just as wonderful: up the Hudson River valley with a few pilgrimages to the legendary farmer's markets upstate (hullo Glens Falls! hullo John Katz country!), then into the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, with a wee pitstop in our beloved New Hampshire. And we cannot. wait. The dogs are bathed, the Scamp is squeaky clean and all tuned up, and I've got a stack of books (per your recommendations) waiting to be devoured. Take that, September.

Boxes, Scones

2011-08-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

{A Tea Break While Moving}

We found a place in Brooklyn. Wait, I mean, WE FOUND A PLACE IN BROOKLYN! Deco fireplace, tons of sunlight, workable kitchen, dogs allowed, just enough room on the fire escape for a few pots of herbs, just enough room in the apartment for a very modest hypothetical future dinner party. I'm over-the-moon excited about our little spot (and thanks to all you Brooklynites for the leads, advice, and recommendations!). And yet. And yet. It turns out finding the apartment, which was no cakewalk, was the easy part. The hard part came next: separating all our belongings (which have been in storage for the past year, mummifying away in dozens of musty cardboard boxes) into the Brooklyn pile, the Boston pile, or the Craigslist/Vietnam vets/local church bazaar/Salvation Army/Good Will pile. And then renting a Penske truck and driving the Brooklyn pile to Brooklyn and moving it all into said Brooklyn apartment, which we did yesterday. My forearms were so sore this morning I let out a little whimper just squeezing the toothpaste tube while brushing my teeth. So one move down, one more to go: we move P. into his Cambridge apartment next week. This whole grad-schools-in-different-cities thing can get a gal a little down when she really stops and thinks about it. Hmph.

So ooobviously the only reasonable thing to do is take a quick mid-afternoon packing break with the soon-to-be-long-distance huz and visit the local Scottish tea room, where my youngest-but-tallest sister is working this summer. More specifically, where my youngest-but-tallest sister is learning to make cherry scones from scratch *and* develop a a killer Glaswegian accent. Because as most of us know, justoutoftheoven scones + strawberry jam + clotted cream = suddenly excellent mood.

Hope you all had a great weekend.

August Still Life

2011-08-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

{Collected Objects from the Weekend}

The apartment hunt began in earnest. In our quest for space and sunlight we left Manhattan behind and crossed the East River like urban voyageurs, heading east, east. And behold the discoveries: leafy tree-lined side streets, wild edible purslane growing in the sidewalks, respite from the heat with iced tea, a beloved Brooklynite cousin and a paper-wrapped bánh mì sandwich (the lunchtime lovechild of French colonial Vietnam, which P. declared a "game-changer"). And I may or may not have splurged on a bar of wickedly 'spency, wickedly delicious Mast Bros. chocolate.

We returned home to the farm exhausted, full of good food, excited. And at the farm, more late-summer discoveries: early heirloom tomatoes in the garden, flicker feathers at the bird feeder, my mother's old notes neatly penciled in the margins of a cherished book of poetry (notes she wrote when she was my age). And perhaps the most auspicious find of all: an army of showy anise swallowtail caterpillars on our behemoth fennel plant.

So we have chocolate, tomatoes, hand-me-down poetry and soon-to-be-butterflies. And quite possibly an apartment in which this blogger will finally unpack her bags after a year of nomadic living. A lucky way to start August, it seems.

Leaving the Island

2011-07-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

{Farewell, Islesford}

As the last of the lupines dropped their blossoms and the haze of Queen Anne's lace began its slow and lovely tatting across the island meadows, we said goodbye to Islesford. Sheets were washed, folded. Walks were long, savored. We drew out the goodbyeing as long as possible.

The house was cleaned. Summer treasures stowed away in pine cupboards or given back to the sea. Into the cupboard with the jar of sea glass. Over the seawall with the collection of beach stones, mussel shells, periwinkles. Over the seawall with the waning arrangements of wildflowers with animal names: oxeye daisy, foxglove, harebell, hawkweed, toadflax.

One last lobster roll. One last swim in the frigid harbor. One last dark and stormy, trimmed with a jaunty sprig of mint from the garden.

Then onto the boat with the dogs, the tattered L.L. Bean bags stuffed with boots and fleeces, the tan legs, the bellies full of popovers from Jordan Pond. Away from the island and the island perfume of rosa rugosa, woodsmoke and balsam. Back to the mainland, to prepare for our next chapter. Farewell, Maine. Farewell, little island community we love so well. Until next year.

Intelligentsia

2011-07-21T15:10:00.000-07:00

{Good Coffee, and Other Scenes from the Kitchen}

Back when P. and I were living in Joshua Tree we made frequent trips into Los Angeles to see friends, take a break from the desert and -when we could spare the cash- make good on a chance to load up on coffee beans at Intelligentsia. So when our buddies from LA showed up in Maine this week with two telltale orange bags I clapped my hands with glee like a demented addict and cheered P. on as he ground the beans in an antique hand-crank grinder we found in a cupboard (an electric grinder was purchased that afternoon). And man is good coffee good; after drinking mostly mediocre coffee in India (albeit indulged with scalded water buffalo milk and golden Indian cane sugar) I'd almost forgotten how legitimately delicious just-roasted, just-ground, just-brewed coffee can be. Sipping the tangy, mellow brew (the Flecha Roja from Costa Rica was the consensus favorite) was one of the most vivid moments of bliss I've had since we've been back from Rajasthan. Shazam, people.

So all you coffeehounds, hip urbanites and global tastemongers, what's your favorite coffee roaster? Please weigh in. I'm betting on some Intelligentsia vs. Stumptown vs. Blue Bottle debates here.

Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins

2011-07-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

{Or, What to Feed Angelenos for Breakfast in Maine}

The tiny, jewel-like wild blueberries are just starting to ripen up here in northern coastal Maine, which means two things: 1. we're smack in the middle of summer and 2. we're eating blueberries, Blueberries For Sal-style, just as fast as we can pop them in our mouths. And so what better way to see off our friends who have been visiting from Los Angeles than with a batch of early morning blueberry cornmeal muffins? As the honeyed scent from the oven wafted upstairs a horde of hungry dogs and men appeared in the kitchen, lips smacking in Pavlovian, species-nonspecific anticipation. Sweet and slightly tart blueberries plus the satisfying crunch of cornmeal is an A+ in my book, and, judging from the speed with which the muffins disappeared, the fellas liked them too.

Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins
Recipe, plus a few tweaks, from Martha Stewart (I know, I know, but all interweb arrows kept pointing me to this particular recipe). Makes a dozen muffins. Absolutely off-the-charts delicious the next day, cut in half and "toasted" in butter in a cast-iron skillet.

Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar, plus 2 tablespoons for sprinkling
3 tablespoons honey
2 large eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk (would be curious to sub with buttermilk)
1 1/2 cups blueberries (or as you like)

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Place softened butter, 3/4 cup sugar, and honey in bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium speed until fluffy, about 1 minute. Add eggs; beat 1 minute more.

2. Whisk flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl; add to butter mixture in mixer bowl. Beat until combined. Slowly pour in milk, beating on low, until just combined. Gently fold in blueberries. Divide dough among greased or no-stick molds (do not pack too firmly). Brush tops with cold water; sprinkle 1 teaspoon sugar over each.

3. Bake until tops are browned, centers are set, and a cake tester inserted in center of muffin comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes. Let cool in pans 5 minutes while beating away the crowd suddenly gathered in the kitchen. Serve at once. If there are any muffins left (doubtful) store in airtight container for two days. YUM.

Maine

2011-07-18T10:58:00.000-07:00

{Island Life}

Supposedly:

-refining my syllabus for a class I'm teaching at NYU this fall

-catching up on old projects put on hold while we were in India

-making new paintings for a solo show in January

Mostly:

-refining a recipe for perfect one-pot Maine haddock chowder (enter the bacon fat, sherry)

-catching up with friends over extended cocktail hours, collaborative dinners, Bananagrams

-making use of a capacious hot water tank via a century-old claw-footed bathtub

P. and I are up north on that wee island in Maine with his extended family, where we're hosting a revolving door of close friends we haven't seen since pre-India, cooking up a storm, and (I speak for myself here) pursuing some harmless neighborhood wildflower pilfering under the guise of "dog-walking." We've got a heck of a fall ahead of us so we're milking this summer of (productive?) vagabondage for all it's worth.

Hope you had a great weekend. On repeat around here: Leaving Home by Yo La Tengo.

Kinfolk, Live

2011-07-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

{Light Reading for the Weekend}

Thanks for all the rockin book recommendations. You guys are a wealth of literary knowledge and inspiration and I can't wait to head to the bookstore with my shopping list. For some light reading over coffee this weekend check out the online issue of Kinfolk Magazine, which just launched this morning (full disclosure: I slept with my laptop on my bedside table so that P. and I could read it first thing this morning before getting out of bed). I couldn't be more excited to be a part of this project, and I can't wait to get my hands on a hard copy. Hope you enjoy it, and see you Monday.

Read Kinfolk online here (and view it in full-screen mode for maximum photographic punch).

Dog v. Goon Squad

2011-07-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

{Biscuit & The Hound of Love on This Year's Pulitzer Prize Winner}

Zipped through Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad and devoured every morsel, but slightly surprised that it was, in fact, a medley of morsels and not an epic tome through which to slog. I might be old-fashioned but it seems a Pulitzer Prize should require a bit of perspiration on the part of the reader; perhaps the award panel had the Twitter set in mind this year. (Poor Jon Franzen and his very long books.) Loved Goon Squad nonetheless and definitely recommend it. It's biting, self-aware, and beautifully written- an acerbic merry-go-round of American mores. And there are just enough trashy sex scenes to make it an entertaining summer vacation book (turns out "Pulitzer Prize" and "Beach Read" are not mutually exclusive).

While we're at it, a brief list of the best books I've read in the past six months, with a slightly Indian inflection:
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Just Kids, Patti Smith
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

What should I add to the list? Would love your recommendations.

The Windmill World of Vollis Simpson

2011-07-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

{Chewing the Fat with a Folk Art Legend}

When P. and I were down in North Carolina recently we made a pilgrimage with our friends deep into the eastern byways in search of folk art legend Vollis Simpson, who has been welding and building whirligigs and windmills for the better part of his 93 years. The trip was a wild lark; we didn't expect to find his compound let alone meet the man behind the magic. So we were giddy when we spotted a thirty-foot sky blue windmill contraption poking into the horizon and floored to find Vollis Simpson himself tinkering away under the sagging overhang of his dilapidated workshop just around the corner. Amid a sprawling smorgasbord of steel pipes, sheet metal, bicycle parts and the bones of rusted farm equipment, Mr. Simpson welcomed us to sit with him in the shade and take a load off. Charming chaps that they are, P. and Billy had Vollis in stitches and telling his story in no time.

One of twelve children, Vollis grew up learning how to use winches and drive mule trains from his father, who had a house-moving business. He built his first windmill to power a washing machine when was stationed in Saipan during WWII. After the war he started his own house-moving company, replacing the mules with an old army truck, and built the occasional windmill to power various gadgets on the family farm. Later he opened a farm equipment repair shop and used old tractor parts and his well-honed house-moving skills to build and install larger, more whimsical windmills, many of which look like elaborate junkyard transmitters to another world. He's been building them ever since. Haven't missed ten days of work in ten years, he beamed.

We must have stayed close to two hours; the boys sat in the shade and chewed the fat with Vollis while Ash and I explored the staggering windmills scattered around his rambling farm (watch out fer the dogs down the road, them's an unfriendly lot) and steered clear of Vollis' booby-traps (I caughta sumbitch's shoe just three days ago; them sneaky bastards gunna come'n steal equipmunt from an ole feller like me, Ima beat the fool outta'm). Vollis is sharp as a tack and full of zingers; when Billy asked what the government gave him in return for his service in WWII, Vollis didn't skip a beat: Wha'd they give me? They gave me hell, is what!

After the PBS documentary and New York Times article about him,Vollis has emerged as somewhat of a folk art celebrity, which bemuses him to no end. (I don't git what all the fuss is about, he told us). Finally, after we'd stayed our welcome and Vollis had to get back to work painting a thirty foot pole before his wife finished her card game, we each shook his hand and said goodbye. I enjoyed ya'll, he said as he slopped on the paint. We left reluctantly, all of us in smiling silence as we drove out of the cool pine shadows of Simpson's Crossroads. When we finally turned on the radio somewhere in the sunny patchwork of east Carolina cotton fields and suburban sprawl, the world of Vollis Simpson already seemed a world away.

For more interviews, observations and photo essays on folk art and outsider art on bigBANG: click here for a post on Leonard Knight's magnificent Salvation Mountain in the California desert; here for Charlie Russell's spectacular East Jesus, an off-the-grid art installation and one-man despotism in Slab City, California (sad side note: beloved Charlie died this spring); here for Noah Purifoy's assemblage masterpiece in my old stomping grounds in Joshua Tree, California; here for Nek Chand's Fantasy Rock Garden, the awe-inspiring junkyard kingdom in Chandigarh, Punjab, India.

Lobster for Everyone

2011-07-06T07:51:00.000-07:00

{July 4th Recap}

July 4th in Maine. An island coming together over lobster, watermelon, a break in the weather. Four generations of islanders, summer people, a combination of the two, grilling, gossiping, catching up. Dogs and seagulls eyeing the abstract masterpiece of the compost bin. Peace and prosperity, says P. Salt air heady with the scent of wild roses, lupines. One last slice of watermelon before we say goodbye. A giddy bike ride home.

Hope you had a wonderful long weekend, and if you get the chance read this marvelous obit for American painter Cy Twombly, whose unique vision and disinterest in the fads and modes of the art world make him one of the most fascinating and delightfully inscrutable iconoclasts of postwar art.

Collaboration with Kinfolk Mag

2011-07-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

{An Article! With Photos! In A Magazine!}

Happy July 1st! Now that we've gone to press and it's fo real, I'm thrilled to tell you that I have a feature piece in the inaugural issue of Kinfolk Magazine, a new online and limited edition print magazine on all the stuff I (we?) go batty over: minimalist art and design, portraits of simple living and tangible ideas for authentic, small-scale entertaining. Basically the antithesis of Martha Stewart Living. There will be no psycho DIY paper pompom-making tutorials; this is, as the magazine's motto describes, a guide for small gatherings.

But I'm just a tiny cog in the whole hand-crank machine of Kinfolk; it's the brainchild of the amazing couple behind Hearblack, one of my absolute favorite quiet, inspiring places on the internet. These guys have been killing themselves getting the rad website up and running (and I *dig* their wonderful blog), and I'm humbled to be among some rawther varsity contributors (like that brilliant Jennifer Causey behind The Maker's Project). Kinfolk launches online July 15, but you can order your advance print copy here.

Have a great weekend!

Pantone Postcards

2011-06-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

{A Magic Box of Rainbows w/out the Psychedelic Drugs}

P. and I were in Washington D.C. last week for a conference and because we were both such polite little children growing up (true fact: my mom used to make my three sisters and me curtsy when we greeted my great-grandmother's friends) we make up for it as adults by doing things like skipping out on post-lunch snooze-fest PowerPoint presentations and running to the Hirshhorn Museum, which neither of us had ever visited before. The Hirshhorn is like the less-famous little sister of the Guggenheim, but with no crowds, more comfortable couches (we totally took a nap in the reading room) and a room set aside just for de Kooning's women. It's fabulous. On our way out I spotted a box of Pantone postcards at the mini gift shop and because I've been such a Parsimonious Patty this year I bought it, full price, with a crisp twenty-dollar bill (and got a 20% discount with my Smithsonian membership card, which my adorable grandfather has renewed for me every year for Christmas since he first gave it to me in sixth grade).

Lucky for you, you can buy the Pantone box of rainbow magic any number of places online, like here. I have visions of framing all the heavenly yellows in cute lil' Ikea frames in a grid on the wall, and sending the super-hein dog-vomit brown ones along with future Con-Ed bills when I move to New York. In the mean time, I'm just going to coddle and cosset the box, opening and closing it, marveling at the rainbow of colors. Which is exactly what I did last night before turning off the light.

And I know I promised you apiaries and folk art this week, but between lots of travel and computer malfunctions I'm behind schedule. And that's pronounced shej-yule, please. More coming soon, promise.

Carolina Summer Salad

2011-06-23T08:08:00.000-07:00

{Watermelon, Strawberry & Spicy Globe Basil Salad with White Balsamic Vinegar}

Ash and I threw this fruit salad together with a North Carolina watermelon from her neighbor, local strawberries, tiny leaves from her spicy globe basil plant (see if you can find one of those puppies for your fire escape/ kitchen windowsill/ herb garden; the tiny leaves are intensely flavorful and aesthetically delightful), a dousing of white balsamic fig-infused vinegar, and a heady cracking of black peppercorn. Super simple, right? The spiciness of the basil and pepper tempers the sweetness of the fruit, and the gentle white balsamic does wonders for the whole shebang. Shazam, I say.

Carolina Summer Salad
My new favorite go-to summer fruit salad. Co-authored by two old friends sitting on a porch and pondering a cleaver and a ten pound watermelon. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
watermelon, cubed
strawberries, hulled and quartered
spicy globe basil leaves, whole
white balsamic fig-infused vinegar (regular balsamic is just fine, too)
cracked black pepper

Directions:
Gently toss fruit and basil with vinegar and pepper in large bowl. Let stand 10 minutes for vinegar to mellow and sweeten (but not too much longer or the watermelon will get sad and watery). Unbelievably refreshing on a hot summer night.

The Good Life: North Carolina Edition

2011-06-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

{An Impromptu Road Trip to Visit Our Besties}

When you are a married adult with all your possessions in storage/ temporarily living with your parents/ self-employed and working from your parents' kitchen table/ not starting grad school until September you could, theoretically, get a little self-conscious about your loserhood and get mildly depressed. Or you could have a conversation like this:

Me: I just clicked send on my project proposal. I'm a free woman for a few days.
P: Want to take the doggies on a road trip to North Carolina to visit Ash and Billy?
Me: Ohmygoshyes.
P: Get in the truck, woman.
[My mom: Wait! I'll make you sandwiches for the road!]

And so we loaded up Biscuit and the Hound of Love (plus my mom's snack pack and three cases of beer from our local brewery) and drove eight hours south to North Carolina to see our dearest newlywed friends Ash and Billy, who are recent Austin-to-Durham transplants. Remember their Austin wedding? And the beginning of their romance with beekeeping? I'm happy to report they've tripled their hives, quadrupled the yield of their backyard vegetable garden, and adopted a puppy.

Whenever we see these guys we end up drinking in the morning, eating way, way too much home-cooked food, getting stung by honeybees, and driving into the middle of podunksville in search of Strange & Unusual Sh*t. We checked all those boxes this visit, and although I've gained two pounds and am just emerging from a two-day-long hangover, my stomach is still sore from laughing so hard. There is nothing as wonderful as being totally and irreverently SILLY, people. Readjusting to Real Life after our year in India is taking a little longer than I expected, and visiting Ash and Billy is always a life-affirming reminder of what P. and I think is important to The Good Life: making the effort to stay in touch with beloved friends, making the effort to cook our own meals, living happily within one's means, maintaining a curiosity about the world and pursuing one's vision. Comfortable rocking chairs, dog-love, a little plot in which to grow decent cucumbers (or at least a kitchen-window pot of herbs), and spending more time reading than watching television doesn't hurt, either.

I know it will be exasperatingly, annoyingly difficult to keep the tenets of The Good Life in rotation when P. and I are absorbed in our graduate school work, commuting on weekends to see each other, keeping a long-distance marriage buoyant and struggling to live on grad student budgets. But I look at Ash and Billy and remember that all it takes is hard work, a sense of humor and the occasional Sunday morning Bloody Mary.

Hope you had a great weekend and Father's Day. On deck this week: a summer fruit recipe, adventures in beekeeping and a pilgrimage to see some down-home outsider art. Stay tuned!

Strawberries Are For Lovers

2011-06-14T05:23:00.000-07:00

{Three Years In}

My favorite early summer dessert, hands-down, is rustic strawberry shortcake: balsamic strawberries with buttermilk drop biscuits and bourbon whipped cream. We had it at our wedding. I gave you the recipe. It's easy, it's always a crowd-pleaser, and it is just so. damn. good.

But with a bumper crop of particularly sweet strawberries in the garden this year we can't bear to gild the lily, so right now we're just hulling them and serving them as-is with P's whipped cream. Perfection. Today's our third year wedding anniversary (three years already?!) so tonight we'll be eating strawberries, counting blessings. Every day with him is the new best day of my life. True fact.

Haying

2011-06-10T11:28:00.000-07:00

{In Which I Judge You by Your Hayloft}

Early June means one thing in the greater Amwell Valley: haying. P. and I are finally earning our keep by helping my mom and dad bring in the hay, which is a laborious process requiring Transformeresque monstrosities of John Deere equipment, a streak of hot, dry weather, and the uttering of hail marys while driving seven tons of hay down tiny country roads. P. was a rock-star and raked hay into the straightest, neatest windrows anyone's ever seen, and my petite mom, as usual, tossed the bales onto the hay elevator like she was merely flipping crumpets. No big deal.

Farming is not my family's livelihood, but it's a big part of our lives. My parents grow, cut, rake, bale, deliver and stack timothy hay for many of the surrounding horse farms, and it's always fun to show up to these beautiful old barns (some of them dating back to the Revolutionary War) and see the innards of the haylofts. Not just for the glorious dose of Americana, but also because I am an evil judger of messy haylofts. Just as one can judge a woman by the organizational state of her purse, one can judge a farmer by the state of his or her layloft. No matter how robust your picking garden, no matter how well-muscled your Herefords, I know you, truly, when I see the inside of your hayloft. Heaps of ancient loose hay, stalagmites of bat guano, complex solar systems of cobwebs and mold spores- these are the barnly equivalents of a purse full of old receipts, gum wrappers, and several almost-empty lipbalms. And if you just gulped guiltily because I described perfectly what the entrails of your purse look like, don't worry; you'd be amazed how messy most haylofts are. Your secret's safe with me, o farmers of Amwell Valley. You shall, for the time being, remain anonymous.

Pics all shot on my iPhone using ToyCamera; one can't exactly load hay bales whilst lugging around a bulky SLR. Have a great weekend, kittens!

Steve's Best Damn Granola

2011-06-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

{In the Kitchen with My Father-in-law}

P's dad makes the best damn granola I've ever had. Period. He brought us a giant Ziploc bag of the stuff when he visited us in Joshua Tree for the first time several years ago, and I've been keen to get his recipe ever since. What makes Steve's granola so special is that it's sweet and just a tad bit salty; he uses maple syrup (from a family friend's sugar bush in New Hampshire, sigh) complimented by a healthy pinch of salt to balance out the sweetness. And it's no-nonsense stuff: no dried fruits or frilly, fancy ingredients. This is hard-core New England granola, folks, which is why I'm calling it Best Damn. And so when P. and I were up in Massachusetts two weeks ago to visit his parents I made it my furtive duty over the course of the weekend to demolish the ready-supply of Best Damn they keep in a giant glass jar in the kitchen. One morning I casually mentioned to Steve that hmm, strange, the granola supply seems to be running low, and would he like to teach me how to make it? Shazam. Instant bigBANG guest-post by my FiL + top secret granola recipe finally revealed. So without further ado:

Steve's Best Damn Granola
Straight from my father-in-law's New England kitchen to your computer screen. Feel free to add flax seeds or unsweetened shredded coconut, etc., but know that it is the masterful simplicity of this recipe that makes it so versatile, special and delicious.

Ingredients:
5 cups rolled oats
1 cup almonds
1 cup walnuts
1 cup pecans
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup canola oil
1+ cup water, or until good and wet

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350. In food processor, pulse almonds for 10 seconds, then dump in pecans and walnuts, brown sugar and salt. Pulse gently until evenly broken up into nice granola-sized bits.

2. Pour nut mixture into large bowl. Add the oats, maple syrup, oil and water; mix with spoon. Adjust sweetness or saltiness to taste. Mixture should be completely and evenly damp (the moisture helps make those satisfying little clumps once you bake). Pour mixture into large ungreased roasting pan and bake for 45 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Granola is done when golden and just-crisp. Allow to cool at room temperature, then store in an airtight container. Excellent with yogurt and fruit, milk, or by the handful as a snack.

Note: If you don't want to deal with stirring your granola as it bakes, turn the temp down to 275 and bake unattended for up to two hours. Steve uses either method, depending on his morning schedule.

New Hampshirous

2011-06-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

{Into the Woods/ Wild Combination}

On Friday P. and I threw together a grab-bag collection of camping gear, loaded Mac and Dolly and a cooler full of Stone IPA (his) and Riverhorse Summer Ale (hers) in the truck, picked up my Brooklynite cousin and her amazing bf, and all headed north for a weekend of revellery in New Hampshire in the form of a cousinly ten year high school reunion.

Although initially the mere thought of a high school reunion brought on hives and a wash of social anxiety, cuz and I rallied* with significant others in tow and ultimately had an absolute blast reconnecting with long-lost classmates. It was a whirlwind of camping, catching up with wonderful people I haven't seen in a decade, hunting for wild pink lady's slipper orchids, and generally marveling at how beautiful New Hampshire is this time of year.

On the long retrospective drive back to New York and New Jersey cuz + bf introduced us to the music of the late Arthur Russell, a New York cellist who was a pioneer in the crossover of downtown music and rock into the early dance beats of the 70s and 80s. I know, what? Just trust me on this one, and give him a listen. Start with That's Us/ Wild Combination, which looks primed to be our song of the summer. Hope you had a great weekend.

* Full disclosure: We may or may not have taken a nip of whiskey in the girls' locker room before the morning reunion event for an extra ounce of courage. Just being honest here, folks.

The Perfect Loaf

2011-06-02T10:53:00.000-07:00

{Everybody's Favorite No-Knead Bread}

One staple we really hankered for in India was a good crusty loaf of bread. India has a rich tradition of unleavened flatbreads -flaky, heavenly parottas in south India and fried whole-wheat paranthas in the north, and of course there's the slightly leavened naan- but unless you're in a major metropolitan area it's virtually impossible to find a nice crusty boule. So one of the first thing I did when we got back to the States was make the beloved recipe for no-knead bread made famous by Mark Bittman in the New York Times back in 2006, adapted from sculptor-turned-bread guru Mike Leahy at Sullivan Street Bakery. Many of you have made this bread; this recipe has been around the block on the blogs for years, but if you are of the priveledged few who have yet to try it, I have three words for you: MAKE THIS BREAD. Even if you've never baked a thing in your life. No, *especially* if you've never baked a thing in your life.

It takes five minutes to make the dough, a day to forget about it (the longer you neglect it the better), and less than an hour to bake the next day. I am but a child in the ways of breadmaking, and yet this was -entirely because of the simplicity of the recipe and nothing to do with any human skill whatsoever- one of the most outstanding soft-and-holey-in-the-middle-but-marvelously-crusty-on-the-outside loaves I've ever had. It's no fuss, all flavor and texture, and totally out of this world.
I can't recommend it enough.

Perfect Rustic No-Knead Bread
Originally printed in the New York Times; adapted from Jim Lahey at Sullivan Street Bakery
Time: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

Directions:
1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18 (mine rose for nearly a full day), at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic; you can use tinfoil if you don't have a lid) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. (A trick I learned from my father-in-law: tap with two fingers; a "hollow" sound means it's done.) Cool on a rack. YUM.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

Home

2011-06-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

{At Long Last, Back on the Farm}

We awoke to a rapture of sweetness in the air. Timothy, Norway spruce, freshly cut grass.

A blur of fur, a rush of dog-love. Mac and Dolly full of kisses, waggy stumps/tails, respectively.

Small World beans, ground, brewed and sweetened. Savored in my grandmother's teacups.

Fits of dianthus erupt like laughter from every available crack in the overgrown garden.

Secret places, wild and green. Quiet places.

Sisters home from San Francisco, Boston, Salvador. A college graduation, with cupcakes.

The barnly organization of tools. The barnly scents of hay, diesel fuel, Murphy Oil Soap.

Sweet Misty. Alone. And very, very old. An old farm horse is a beast full of love, patience.

Certain dogs have discovered horse manure. Certain humans fight back with Cowboy Magic.

Tending to a split-rail fence. And realizing my parents could use a little help around the place.

Forgotten vessels, discovered amid tall grass, buttercups. Tadpoles. A whiff of childhood.

Spots, in various forms, from various places. Like Joshua Tree and Montana. Spots that get along.

Strawberries. Some half-nibbled by mice. All devoured by corgyn if you don't close the garden gate.

Hidden in the hay fields: fledgelings, fawns, fox kits and one very large, very surly skunk.

A celebratory family dinner. All around one table for one precious night. Candles, peonies. Lettuce from the garden. And mosquitoes, but no one will remember that part later when they think back to that wonderful summer evening.

And so it is very good to be home. Almost too good; we are blessed beyond belief. Such bounty, space, and comfort is almost overwhelming after living in a place where so many people live with so little. A lot of thinking to do, there is. And a lot of weeding. Lucky for me, says my mom, thinking and weeding go hand-in-hand. Today we'll plant tomatoes. Next week we'll bring in the hay. There will be lots of weeding. And good beer. And so this is how we Come Back Home, Make Ourselves Useful, and Chew our Existential Cud. Dheeray, dheeray, as they say in India. Slowly, slowly.

Der Lämmergeier

2011-05-27T06:26:00.000-07:00

{A Week Offline & A Sicknasty Bird Sighting}

We're back online, kittens. And I may or may not have had the most titillating bird-sighting of my life in the mean time. Meet the lämmergeier, aka the Mike Tyson of the bird kingdom.

Let's review:

Species: der lämmergeier
Also known as: the bearded vulture
Wingspan: ten feet
Superpower: Can swallow entire sheep femurs whole and dissolve the bone into mush using its nuclear reactor of a digestive system.
Distinctive features: Unlike most vultures, the lämmergeier has a feathered head, including a cartoonish wispy beard reminiscent of Ethan Hawke's more committed attempts at facial hair in the mid-nineties.
Favorite indulgences: Sucking bone marrow from bighorn sheep bones; cavorting over the Himalayas; covering itself in mud; dropping tortoises/animals from great heights onto rocks wherefore to break hard exoskeletons/bones.

Pretty amazing, right? I'm going to find-all-replace the word "bad-ass" with the word "lämmergeier" from now on. Heaps and heaps of posts coming your way (yaks! tent camps! the perils of Himalayan driving!) so stay tuned.

Epilogue

2011-05-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

{Ladakh}

You didn't think we just up and left India like that, whiz-bang, did you? Heavens, no. The ATM sighed as we withdrew one last precious, meager wad of rupees and booked two tickets north to eastern Kashmir, to the mostly-Buddhist region known as Ladakh. Not thaaat far from Pakistan. Not thaaat far from Afghanistan. Very much not thaaat far from Tibet. But pretty damn far from just about everyplace else. Ladakh. The unclaimable, untamable mountain desert at the top of the world. Where 15th-century monasteries still tower from their cliffside perches like stone sentinels keeping watch over Time, Humanity. Where Indus Valley apricot orchards erupt in fuzzy bloom this time of year, and higher yet, up in the glaciers of the Himalaya, the last surviving snow leopards patrol for game.

Ladakh. Where one stumbles out of the tiny Leh airport at 11,000 feet out of breath from Thin Air, out of breath from Staggering Beauty.

Ladakh. Heaven on earth. Shangri-la.

So Long, Jaipur

2011-05-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

{Leaving Home, or, Our Last Few Days in the Pink City}

It is always more difficult to Tie Up Loose Ends that one anticipates.

But somehow we managed. We moved out of our flat just as the summer cockroaches started moving in, we savored an epic, food-coma-inducing farewell dinner with our adorable Gujarati neighbors (hullo sweet curried potatoes with raisins, cashew paste and poppy seeds!) and I *finally* finished a purgatorial traditional miniature painting less than twelve hours before we boarded the bus for Delhi with all our belongings. And although there is always more to do, more to see, more to learn, we left the Pink City with nothing but wonder and graditute in our hearts.

So namashkaar, Jaipur. We learned to love you, and you loved us back in ways we never could have imagined.

The Skirt

2011-05-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

{Driving a Hard Bargain in Bapu Bazaar}

See my new skirt? It's my Make Sh*t Happen skirt. Some of you might remember I only have one pair of pants in India, so what with these 100+ degree days and a lot to get done a breezy skirt is a welcome addition to my strict minimalist traveler's wardrobe.*

Here's the back-story: after a wonderful tour and visit at the local design college, one of the adorable students insisted she take me to chaotic Bapu Bazaar in the ancient walled city section of Jaipur, which is famous for cheap locally-made textiles and traditional Rajasthani shoes. It's also famous for ripping off tourists, but I was intent on proving my bargaining skillz. And after nine months of intense study, I'm getting pretty good at it. The Art of the Indian Bargain is a good-natured if histrionic charade (by both parties) involving theatrical hand gesturing and excessive head-bobbling, and often climaxes with a dramatic, empty-handed storming out of the shop and a final bargain stuck on the pavement. It goes like this:

Me, pointing disinterestedly to a pile of skirts that I am secretly very interested in: Kitnai? How much?
Shopkeeper: 400 rupees only. Very nice. Quality A+ first class.
Me, displaying look of shock, insult: 400?! No no, too much.
Shopkeeper: Yes, madam, very nice quality. You buy now.
Me, picking up skirt: Look at this stitching! No good. No one will buy this.
Shopkeeper: Ok I give you good deal, you buy. 350 rupees only.
Me: I don't want it. But I'll take it for 150 rupees.
Shopkeeper, dramatically rolling eyes: Nooo, madam, actually, that is no good. 300 rupees only, last price.
Me, waving skirt away: 300 rupess, TWO SKIRTS. Final offer.
Shopkeeper, feigning shock and horror: 300 for two skirt?! 400 only!
Me, clucking with my friend and walking out of shop: No, uncle, you insult with 400 rupees.
Shopkeeper, running after us with both skirts: OOOOKAAAAY FINE! 350 final offer!
Me, head bobbling, releasing dispassionate but secretly thrilled sigh: Ok, why not.

And so. 350 rupees ($7) for two totally wacky geographically schizophrenic South Asian/Southwestern cotton wrap skirts = happy shopkeeper (I still overpaid) and happy me.

* Full disclosure: the collection of textiles I've amassed abrogates whatever minimalist credibility I may have accrued with the one pair of pants stunt.

Searching, Finding

2011-04-29T06:16:00.000-07:00

{The Week in Review}

Spent an embarrassingly large chunk of my week searching Jaipur for the following items:
-Italian wool
-string
-FedEx
-cranberry juice
-sanity

Found instead:
-Indian cotton
-purple twine
-OvEx (Indian Overnite Express)
-chikoo lassi
-felicity

Sometimes what you actually find is better than what you originally set out searching for. Especially when it's 106 degrees and you come across a fellow selling fresh chilled chikoo lassis. Major score.

Have a great weekend. We're tying up loose ends and moving out of our apartment in one week (whot?!) before heading waaay north to a high-altitude heaven on earth for some R&R. And I have so. much. to do before we leave the Thunderdome I don't even know where to start. (But purple twine seems like a logical first step.)

Motorcycle Trip

2011-04-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

{Flashback: Travels with Pops}

I was scrolling through iPhoto looking for shots of Joshua Tree (upcoming guest-post! stay tuned!) and came across these old pictures from my birthday motorcycle trip with my dad two years ago. This post breaks two rules: I've posted some of these pictures before *and* it shows faces, but all the Neil Young I've been listening to today inspired a devil-may-care re-post. After all, you can't very well write about an American motorcycle trip according to the rules.

Rewind back to April 2009: P. was in Fallujah doing Really Dangerous Stuff, I had just wrapped up a show and was having a bit of a hard time missing him, my birthday was approaching, and neither my dad nor I had ever seen the Grand Canyon. So my dad rented a Road King from the Palm Springs Harley-Davidson dealer, I baked and tinfoiled two loaves of rosemary cornbread (one bounced off the bike at 60 mph near Amboy, CA and exploded into a million tragic golden pieces; the other we shared with fellow-bikers on a washed-out road in desolate Peach Springs, AZ), and away we went. It still cracks me up that my dad wore pleated khakis the entire trip, but that's what makes dads dads, right? The father-daughter Harley trip has become somewhat of a tradition in our family now, and seeing that part of the Southwest by bike was honestly one of the most joyous, amusing, life-affirming trips I've ever taken. Also, the only valid excuse to wear a black leather jacket with copious amounts of fringe.

Speaking of which, I bet a hundred rupees one of my light-fingered closet-raiding sisters lifted that baby while I was in India.

Phulkari

2011-04-27T00:48:00.000-07:00

{Punjabi Embroidery as Family History}

P. and I were visiting friends in Agra recently (we just realized I haven't spent more than two and a half weeks at a time at home in Jaipur without traveling since December!). Our wonderful hosts, who I'll do a full post on soon, had the most incredible heirloom textile collection, and I've been dying to share this unusual phulkari with you. It was embroidered by our friend's grandmother at the beginning of the 20th century, in what is now Lahore, Pakistan. She made it in preparation for her wedding, at the age of 13.

Indigenous to the region of Punjab, phulkari (pronounced pull-kahr-ee or full-kahr-ee, depending on accent) means "flower-working" in Hindi, and is famous for its all-over geometric silk-on-cotton embroidery in riotous oranges, hot pinks, and golds. This particular phulkari is unusual in that it also features the mirror-work common to the textiles of Rajasthan. It's an exquisite hybrid of traditional regional textile designs from pre-Independence, pre-Partition India.

When Pakistan and India split in 1947, establishing a bloody religious boundary through the Punjab, our friend's Hindu family fled from Lahore across the new border and settled in Agra. Miraculously, the wedding phulkari made it through all those years of upheaval intact, and thinking of all that history -of a thirteen-year-old child-bride making every stitch in anticipation of her unknown future- gives me goosebumps. I think that's the most intoxicating thing about old textiles: the story of the author is so intrinsically a part of the physical article.

For a tour-de-force of eclectic South Asian textiles (and jewelry!) see Jeana Sohn's studio visit with my friend, textile maven Joanna Williams, here.

Street Food

2011-04-25T09:15:00.000-07:00

{Easter Dinner in Satkar Market}

P. and I have been cooped up all day in our apartment, laying low in the shadows like geckos seeking respite from the intense heat of the late desert spring. Finally at sunset we set out by foot across our neighborhood to a row of South Indian and Chinese street dhabas that serve up their fare in the sweltering hundred degree heat. For fifty rupees (a dollar twelve) we got the best chow mein I've ever had, plus a plate of delicate steamed Tibetan momos with a geographically-incongruous but out-of-this-world peanut-chili sauce. And you'd better believe we're going back for the hubcap-sized coconut-onion dosas ASAP.

Just as we were leaving, a curious grandfather with an artfully-trimmed mustache (alas, Rajasthan; always the mustache) inquired what brought us to Malviya Nagar, a bustling neighborhood that rarely sees Westerners. We told him that we live here, and he opened his palms in surprise and delight: It is my honor that you are guests in my neighborhood, and in my country. Please, welcome. We thanked him in our best Hindi, bowed, and smiled the whole walk home.

Hope you had a great holiday weekend.

Desert Tent Camp

2011-04-23T05:47:00.000-07:00

{Luxury in the Thar Desert}

The night before Carrie and I took down the show in Delhi we slept in a stuffy non-airconditioned stained-sheeted cockroach-inhabited (not quite infested, just, like, inhabited) guesthouse room in the backpacker district. You know what's the opposite of that? A luxury tent camp in the Thar Desert, in rural western Rajasthan. Boo-ya, seedy guesthouse by the Delhi train station:

P. and I spent one glorious night here with his parents when they came to visit a few months ago, and I keep thinking about how marvelous it was to wake up in the desert to birdsong and a strong cup of coffee. Just like how we used to do in Joshua Tree, only different birds, different coffee.

And yes, that's a non-fiction book by Elizabeth Gilbert AND a bowl of potato chips (either Tomato Mischief or Masala Magic, I can't remember which) in the same picture, both of which are usually banned in real life for the sake of mental and physical health, respectively.

New Respek

2011-04-20T02:09:00.000-07:00

{The Perfect Rugged Man Shirt, etc.}

See this rad hand-loom cotton I picked up at our local khadi shop in Jaipur?

We took it to our favorite local tailor and had it custom-made into a Rugged Man Shirt for P. For five dollars. And, because I'm always stealing his Rugged Man Shirts and because the price was right, we went back and had another one made for me. Also, side-note: there's a saying in Rajasthan that loosely translates to without a mustache you are not a man. So in preparation for some field research in the villages out west, P. has been working a pretty commited beard and 'stache for a solid month now, and seriously, he gets handshakes and slaps on the backs from the old Rajput guys in the neighborhood. So white guy in Rajasthan + otherwise ridiculous facial hair = respek. Amazing.

P.S. Are any of you readers out there converted Kindle people? P. has an old first generation Kindle and swears by it, while I stubbornly tote Jonathan Franzen around by the pound. Thoughts?

Happy Journey

2011-04-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

{Or, A Birthday Bus Ride Home}

Saturday the 16th was my 29th birthday. I spent the day away from my sweetheart, taking down the show at Threshold Gallery in New Delhi and sweating entirely through my shirt and (only pair of) pants because they wouldn't turn on the AC and Delh is getting h-o-t. My always-chipper SUPER/POWER collective ya-ya Carrie Fonder and I schlepped across the city to FedEx with a hundred pounds of artwork, got ripped off by a taxi driver, and finally, finally, I boarded the Jaipur bus with a giant duffel of my paintings and made my way home. Home, through the the outskirts of humid Delhi, past the endless jungles of re-bar, cement and so many faceless men, past the sprawling villages and their nighttime cows eating garbage, and finally into the dusty grasp of the Thar Desert. Home. Which is a funny thing, that word.

Silently enjoying a birthday dosa dinner all alone at a midway rest stop in a country where one doesn't speak the language is, actually, a very reflective way for this blogger to spend her 29th birthday in India. Back on the bus and sitting next to a diminutive, gentlemanly Muslim grandfather who endured all seven hours of the trip with his arthritic knobby hands placed plainly and patiently on his arthritic knobby knees, I thought about all the things I'm grateful for. I also thought about how I wish I'd worked harder learning Hindi this year. I thought about how much I cherish and miss my sisters and friends back home in the US. And yet how I've been happy, for the most part, living in this marvelously crazy place. I thought about how I hope I can translate the simplicity of our Indian life into a good, purposeful, meaningful life when I move to New York. Most of all I thought about how much I worship my husband, how proud I am to be a part of his life, and how even when India really siphons the vigor out of us like a rabid leprous vampire bat sucking on the teats of our souls, it's been a pretty incredible year, namely in that we've learned how to make wherever we are home.

P. picked me up at the bus station just before midnight with garlands of marigolds and hugs and conservative Rajasthan-appropriate kisses and a big sparkly witch's hat that the fellow at the corner everything-store insisted was a birthday hat. Outside our front door a certain someone had written a little love note in flowers he'd gotten from our new favorite local character: the 300-pound one-legged female flower-seller who is *also* the reigning state champion shot-put thrower in the women's amputee division. (You can't make this stuff up.) Inside was the cutest little cake you've ever seen from the local bakery. All the shopkeepers had helped P. put together the most adorable Jaipur-style stroke-of-midnight birthday party, and it was enough to inspire some dusty, happy, road-weary tears. The next day we went to Anokhi Cafe, my faaavorite cafe in Jaipur, for a languorous, three-hour, postcard-writing and talk-of-the-future birthday lunch. Best birthday ever, and, as my bus ticket indicated, the start of a Happy Journey indeed.

New York

2011-04-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

{Next Year}

So. The news. I got into my dream graduate program (and didn't get into others; let it be made very clear in this world of shiny happy blogs that things are not always Easy and Perfect and Successful all up in dis piece) and will be moving to New York City this coming September. I'll be one of twenty-four peeps in my MFA program, and I cannot *wait* to get this party started. I'm so excited I've been doing a little dance every time P. mentions it. (Which looks a lot like Peanut Butter Jelly Time.)

I lived in New York after I gradumatated from college (by way of a brief and inglorious grant-gone-wrong in Mongolia) and those were two incredibly happy, life-changing years surrounded by best friends, beloved coworkers and family. Joshua Tree will always be home away from home for us, but P. and I are pretttty stoked about this next chapter in New York.

A lot of details to figure out (the dogs! finding an apartment! what to do with our Joshua-Tree-appropriate pickup truck in New York City! and, um, P's graduate program in a different city!) but we'll figure it out as we go. That's kind of been our modus operandi these past few years and it seems to be working out just fine.

So anyway, that's the news. To my beloved California bloggers, I'll miss your sunshiny dispositions, your proximity to the desert and your year-round citrus bounty. Sniff, sniff. And to all you New York bloggers, HOLLA!

Pictures from a new project I'm working on...more soon.

Weekend Assessment

2011-04-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

{Table Views and New Music}

On Friday (like every other day) my studio was a jumble of paint, patterns and textiles. And by studio I mean my plastic desk we bought at the outdoor bazaar and carried home on the roof of a rickshaw some six months ago.

My dear friend Rebecca Layton, artist and textile designer extraordinaire and fellow SUPER/POWER collective member, gave me this little silkscreen painting before she left Jaipur. The color was so heavenly I hunted the local khadi shop on Saturday until I found a handloom silk scarf in the exact same Andaman Sea turquoise. (A handloom silk scarf for a certain sister- I'll let you three sissies ponder who. Mwahaha.)

On Sunday morning we made extra strong French press coffee with scalded water buffalo milk. I drank three cups and had the jittery sweats all day but it was so worth it. And we had *mangoes.* It's officially Mango Season, and believe me, we are taking full advantage. I probably have three a day, and as a result all my kurtas have orange stains dribbled down the front. I figure it makes other people feel better about themselves when they see me walking down the street like that. I like to think of my mango stains as my small gift to egos everywhere.

And to round out the weekend our good fellow Noah Lennox, known to his devotees as Panda Bear (and as the frontman of Animal Collective), is coming out with a new album called Tomboy. You can listen to a preview of the entire album on NPR here; if our internet wasn't ox-cart slow I'd be able to listen to it and give you an opinion. I'm *really* hoping it's as mindblowingly celestial and strange and wonderful as his last album. So all you music fiends with your fancy fast internets, tell a girl, how is it? I'll just be over here fondling my cotton samples and eating mangoes while you give it a listen.

The Jaipur Julep

2011-04-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

{Making Something Out of Nothing and Other Good News}

P. and I both got some really fantastic news this week. News that will throw our lives into wildly different but thrilling directions next year. News that will mean we will be returning to the land of purple mountain majesty with A Plan. And probably worms, but they make stuff for that.

The only reasonable thing to do when we got said newzes was to make an alcoholic concoction out of the available options in our local bazaar, starring a bottle of very cheap, very disgusting but perfectly useful whiskey. I'm a purest (Dalwhinnie if it's whiskey, Maker's if it's bourbon, cut with mineral water) but if living in India has taught me anything it's that one must always be willing to improvise.

And so let me introduce you to the Jaipur Julep. A real mint julep consists chiefly of bourbon, crushed ice, sugar, and fresh mint; the first two ingredients do not exist in these parts, but the second two are readily available. And let's add a little grated fresh ginger because we're in India and why the hell not.

Jaipur Julep
No Lilly Pulitzer dresses allowed.

Ingredients:
whiskey or bourbon
robust bunch of mint
two Indian limes per person (the limes here are heavenly, tiny and sweet; if you don't have such things use one meyer lemon per person instead)
fresh ginger
unprocessed sugar
soda water

Directions:
Using a pitcher and muddler (or in our case a wide plastic bottle with the top sawed off with a Leatherman, and a chipati rolling pin as our weapon), juice the limes and add all the shredded mint you care for. Grate a teaspoon or two of fresh ginger into the mix, add a pinch of sugar, and muddle your heart out. Strain into a glass. That's the mix.

In each glass, pour a dram of whiskey/bourbon, add double the amount of mix, and finish with soda water. Give a good stir and shabash! ("well done" in Hindi). Adjust to taste as you go. SO. GOOD. And so refreshing on these hot desert evenings in this crazyass city.

Enjoy, and have a good weekend! Newzes to be announced soon, promise.

Desert Bloom, Desert Dogs

2011-04-06T23:41:00.000-07:00

{Mac & Dolly}

P's mom is in Joshua Tree and Palm Springs for a few nights on a girl's trip (how fun is that? And they're staying at the Ace in Palm Springs. HIP MAMAS.) She's been sending us the cutest iPhone picture updates of our old haunts -dinner and two-stepping at Pappy & Harriet's, a hike in the National Park, swimming under the stars in the marvelous desert evenings- and not only does it make me pine longingly for The Kookiest Town on Planet Earth, but it really, really makes me miss our doggies. I shot these two pictures during the desert bloom last spring, almost exactly a year ago.

Mac the corgi (aka Biscuit) was the prince of our little kingdom out there in the boulders and beavertails, and Dolly, the rescue we adopted when P. and I fist got married and moved to the desert, was our ever-faithful lady-in-waiting. The blue-blooded AKC champ corgi and the funny spotted mutt made our lives out there endlessly amusing and infused with love, and I can't wait to hold their precious velvet faces in my hands and squeeze the stuffing out of them when we come home in -my god- less than two months. *If* my mom and dad ever let us take them back. Seems like Ma and Pa Stockman have gotten quite attached to Mac's little corgyn snuffling and his trixie, impish ways, and they can't get enough of gentle Dolly's adorving, patient, mountain-moving love. In other words, they aren't giving them up without a fight. My pops recently sent me an email with a picture of Dolly curled up in his lap while he read the morning paper (she is not a small dog, people) and all it said in the subject heading was "MINE."

Uh-oh. I feel a parental arm-wrestling competition/ canine custody battle coming on.

Goatie

2011-04-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

{And a Note from Sickbay}

You guys have been so patient. All this art talk and no goats for ages. For now I'll just say the show opening was a ball, and a Peak Life Experience were it not for some sort of splendidly horrid bacterial plague going around Delhi. All weekend our friends dropped like flies with onslaughts of sudden projectile vomiting and/or bouts of explosive diarrhea. It was like the beginning of a zombie movie, when everyone contracts that airborne zombie virus. I made it through the show opening just fine, but on Saturday night -just as India beat Sri Lanka in the cricket World Cup and 1.2 billion Indians went absolutely apesh*t- I felt a rumble in the Bronx and I knew I was screwed. I won't go into any further detail besides saying it was so violent I pulled a hamstring mid-session with a squat-toilet the next morning in the Delhi airport. Kittens, I wish this not even on my worst enemy.

Let's move on. To the goat. Notice the goatie necklace made of rubber shoe sole. And that tiny creepy pinky goatie tongue. How can that not make your day? Seriously.

New Paintings!

2011-03-28T07:09:00.000-07:00

{Agro Pop: The Industrial Grain Storage Facilities of India}

Installation view

Full Humidity / oil on panel / 12 x 16 in.

Pink Mughal / oil on panel / 12 x 16 in.

Spring Godown / oil on panel / 12 x 16 in.

Status Quo / oil on panel / 12 x 16 in.

Dehradun Cash Cow / oil on panel / 12 x 16 in.

Punjabi Remix / oil on panel / 12 x 16 in.

Sugar Cane / oil on panel / 12 x 16 in.

Good Business / oil on panel / 12 x 16 in.

Excerpt from SUPER/POWER catalogue (click on image for bigger, easy-to-read version)

What's hotter than industrial grain storage facilities in India? Not much, people. Come see the new paintings (and the insaneface installation of work by my three cohorts, starring a pimped-out rickshaw that will make you blush) on opening night at Threshold Gallery in New Delhi, Friday April 1st, 6-7:30 PM. This is the culmination of nearly eight months of work (researching and developing the project and making the paintings was the easy part; getting funding for the traveling exhibition and organizing the logistics of moving an art show around India, not so much), and the icing on the cake is that the Times of India did a feature on the show today (!), complete with a rambling quote about the architectural monuments of India's contemporary visual landscape etc., etc., etc. by yours truly, which you can read online here.

Urthing's for sale, people, so if something strikes your fancy hit me up before the show opens to the masses on Friday night! lily.stockman at gmail.com. All oil on panel, 100% archival, mounted in custom-made minimalist frames.

xo.

The Curtains I Didn't Steal

2011-03-24T22:21:00.000-07:00

{Three Images for the Weekend}

1. A riot of daisies blooming streetside in New Delhi (real flowers! in Delhi!)
2. Marvelous vintage hand-woven natural-dyed ikat curtains at a friend's studio. If I were in the habit of making off with people's curtains, I'da made off with these babies right quick. But if learned anything from two years of first grade it's that you don't want people going around saying you steal curtains.
3. The cheerful colors of an autorickshaw interior, uncheerfully abandoned mid-traffic jam by its apoplectic auto-wallah after a fender-bender. I've gotten really good at minor car accidents and squat toilets, by the way.

Have a maaahvelous weekend. I'll be posting images of the new paintings on Monday, so stay tuned!

The Pink City Pageant

2011-03-22T01:04:00.000-07:00

{Why A Beauty Pageant for Elephants Makes Me Feel Hopeful About Japan}

India is an in-your-face daily spectacle of the haves and the have-nots, of the wonders and horrors of humanity. There are bombings, burnings, murders, rapes, tramplings, riots, earthquakes, landslides, floods and droughts enough to bring a less adaptive society to its knees. There are 460 million people living below the global poverty line (there are more people living in abject poverty in India than in all of sub-Saharan Africa combined). And yet. And yet. The Indians carry on. They paint elephants and bedazzle them in silver bells and silk brocades, pack Independence-era mortar tubes with confetti, strap them onto the backs of camels, and throw outrageous celebrations of spring. Rich, poor, high caste, low caste, Hindu, Muslim, grandmas in saris and granddaughters in Juicy Couture. Everyone came out to welcome in the festival of Holi at Jaipur's One and Only 100% A+ Pink City Elephant Beauty Pageant. And it was *glorious.*

As we all wring our hands in despair, helplessness, grief, and guilt (yup. don't pretend you're immune to the Guilt of The Priveledged) over the situation in Japan, it's helpful to open my eyes wide to the vibrant heroics of Indian life and marvel at the enduring triumph of the human spirit. Have faith, muggles.

P.S. Chamba, the she-elephant with the lion-eating-the-chital-deer painted on her face (top photo), won the beauty pageant. And although PETA might find her trappings and face paint unconscionable, I for one thought she was the most glamorous ellie I've ever seen.

Our Lady of Hope

2011-03-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

{An All-Inclusive Appeal to the Powers That Be}

Hey crew. The opening was amazing, but let's talk about it next week. Bigger stories to follow right now, and hard ones to swallow.

But in the spirit of keeping the faith (whatever be your conviction or persuasion), here are some shots of the gorgeous 17th century Portuguese churches around Old Goa in southern India, including the stunning effigy of Our Lady of Hope (third picture from top). Originally carved from wood by Franciscan friars in Italy, she was brought to Goa by Portuguese sailors in the heyday of the spice trade, and beautifully painted in gold leaf, cobalt, and buttermilk-marble paste by local Hindu-turned-Catholic craftsmen in 1652. Despite the unsavory history of religious conversion, it was breathtaking to watch pilgrims -Catholic and Hindu alike- light candles and lay garlands of marigolds at the feet of Our Lady of Hope.

As far as religion goes, I'm an opportunist and firm believer in seeking out all the help you can get (must be the pagan Pictish blood from my Scottish side of the family). So although I'm no Hindu, tonight I bought a string of marigolds from the one-legged lady on the street and made an offering to the Ganesh shrine our landlords built into the space above our front door. So to Ganesh I ask he remove what seem like insurmountable obstacles at Fukushima, and to Our Lady of Hope I pray to keep safe the people of Japan.

Beach Dogs

2011-03-12T00:40:00.000-08:00

{Two Days in Goa & Some Thoughts on Dogs Getting Second Chances}

I've been offline for the better part of the past week for good reason: real life usurped blog life. I've been clocking six hour bus rides between Jaipur and Delhi with a giant black duffel bag full of paintings, organizing last-minute logistics for art-related endeavors, flying across the country after multiple nights on less than four hours of sleep and stupidly, exhaustedly leaving my laptop in the airport security line (more on that later). But on the way to a conference P. and I were finally, marvelously, able to take a break from the madness and spend two days of R&R on the beaches of Goa. We stayed in a perfect palm grove beach shack in laid-back Patnem that a friend had highly recommended, where we ate our weight in fresh tomats and shredded basil with real balsamic vinegar, which was such a continental treat in the land of masala. I gleefully ordered 3pm no-nonsence cocktails and plowed through Sarah MacDonald's bawdy, staggeringly un-PC love/hate affair with India, Holy Cow, which has been described as "condescending, narrow-minded, insulting and ethnocentric." Which is precisely why it was so entertaining.

But the best thing about Goa: beach dogs. There's a whole oligarchy of feral but well-fed, well-mannered beach dogs running the show in Patnem, and although the practice is forbidden in our house, P. and I happily fed scraps directly from the table and into the gentle, grateful maws of our new buddies. In return we were rewarded with their stately (if scruffy) company. Compared to your average street dog in India, these mutts have it made in the shade. For a pretty tough but hopeful story about a down-and-out doggy getting a second chance back in the US of A, read Beth's courageous post over at Six Orange Carrots. Having gone through some serious initial trials those first few months after adopting our spotted desert mutt, Dolly (who had been abused and was terrrified of men) I can say unequivicolly that watching her grow into the incredibly affectionate, gentle, intelligent copilot that she is now (and watching her bond with P. after he returned from his last combat tour) has been one of the biggest, purest joys of my adult life.

So there's that.

Hope you have a great weekend. The first leg of our show opens tonight, and my paintings are hung and my sari is ironed. But I can't help thinking that half a world away our motley pair of doggies are just bedding down in my parent's comfortable house, and how lucky they (and we) are indeed.

Palette Inspiration

2011-03-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

{Coral, Geranium, Pink}

That nail polish? Not just for nails. It's palette inspiration for the new paintings. Which is pink. Unabashedly, unapologetically pink.

This pink thing started with the ubiquitous blooming bougainvillea, which festoons the roadsides of Rajasthan in billowing clouds of electric coral and fuchsia. Further inspired by the I-Love-the-80s-pink saris I seem to see everywhere in Jaipur this spring. And then there are the famous peony-pink walls of the very city itself. My visual vocabulary has never been so happily bombarded.

Hope you had a good weekend. I'm in Delhi delivering work and doing some last-minute framing with one of the other lassies in the show. More soon. (We are v. excited, muggles.)

Taking Stock

2011-02-24T10:33:00.000-08:00

{A Few Scenes from the Week}

I'm taking a midnight break after twelve hours of painting (Lord Krishna help me; all the paintings need to be dry by Monday) to take stock of the week: work, punctuated by countless cups of strong black tea, collecting source material for a side project and rooftop beers with friends (rooftop beers concealed in mugs so as not to ruffle neighborhood feathers, which adds a certain teenage sense of naughtiness to our perfectly legal and otherwise boring, occasional beer-drinking). Our internet connection is usually too slow to download music, but I recently bought Pantha de Prince's mesmerizing song Lay in a Shimmer during a thrilling ten-minute stretch of high-speed internet bliss (beer! internet! I'm living on the edge!), and it's the perfect mellow dream sequence for late-night, all-night painting benders. If you're sick of your old Ratatat albums and twiddling your thumbs waiting for Noah Lennox's next project, download Lay in a Shimmer, stat. It's gorgeous.

Also, that hand-woven, natural-dye dhurrie pictured in my Jodhpur post? P. went back to the weaver in secret and bought it, then carted it on a seven hour bus ride across Rajasthan to give it to his Valenthyme. What a fellow he is, that P.

Mkay, back to work. (And I realize the excessive use of parentheses is an indication of both too much caffeine and not enough sleep. Alas.) Have a great weekend.

Traffic, Bacon

2011-02-23T05:09:00.000-08:00

{Vegans, Consider Yourself Warned}

You know what really makes the otherwise insufferable Jaipur traffic somewhat entertaining? A pair of bristly pigs crossing six lanes of traffic like it ain't no thang. Just snorting and trotting through the chaos as they wag their disgusting, marvelous little tails like metronomes in time with the clicking of their pointy hooves.

Which brings us, naturally, to the topic of bacon. Or the lack thereof. We're good Hindu neighbors these days, what with our necessitated vegetarianism, but man, to be perfectly frank I could *really* go for some bacon. A BLT with avocado, howbout. Or even better: a big stack of buttermilk pancakes slathered with farmhouse butter, doused in Vermont maple syrup, and complimented with a crispy stack of apple-smoked, nitrate-free, certified organic BACON. Apologies to my vegetarian brethren, but a lady deprived of salty pig strips for too long is enough to make said lady consider just what all's involved in capturing a feral street pig, taking it to the nearest presumably-non-Muslim butcher and asking, politely, for bacon.

Not really, but the thought did cross my mind. I totally probably wouldn't eat feral street pig.

Less is More

2011-02-20T01:16:00.000-08:00

{The Jodhpur Guesthouse Metaphor}

Just something to keep in mind when traveling in India, and in life in general: a $15 room can give you a million dollar view (and bedbugs, but somehow we've managed to avoid that affliction while traveling on the cheap). Case in point: Our Peak Life Experience trip two weeks ago to the heavenly blue city of Jodhpur, deep in our beloved desert state of Rajasthan. We stayed in a crumbling five-hundred-year-old home-turned-budget guesthouse in the haphazard maze of the Old City, and the modest rooms were comfortable, clean, and less than $15 a night. The views were off. the. hook. And being off the beaten path yielded the most unexpected marvels. (Street parades with children wreathed in marigolds! Leopard-spotted bulls eating garbage outside temples! Congenial opium-smoking septuagenarians with resplendent mustaches! Quiet sunset meanders through the narrow streets up to the fort!) As P. and I make some big financial and life decisions about the next year, we're keeping the Jodhpur Guesthouse Metaphor in mind: sometimes less is most definitely more.

Have a great weekend, and thanks for all the great comments and emails this week. Lemon must have the biggest posthumous online cult following in the history of Great Ponies (sorry, Misty of Chincoteague).

Getting It Together

2011-02-17T11:17:00.000-08:00

{Or, Five Steps to Overcoming Pony-Death and/or Your Standard Late-February Blues}

1. Wake up. If one is to move on and be an adult about things, one must first Get Out of Bed. And admire one's handmade block-printed Anokhi quilt while you're at it. Then one should read a little. I finally just finished Liz Gilbert's rambling, histrionic treatise on marriage, Committed, and happily changed gears with Patti Smith's slim, gorgeous, unsentimental but deeply human Just Kids.

2. Scald milk on the stove. Not just regular old watery skim but rich, sumptuous water buffalo milk. This stuff can really make you get up in the morning, people. Imagine the best latte you've ever had, then add magic unicorn tears and crack. That's how special and good this stuff is.

3. Brew a decent cup of chai. Extra cardamom, heavy on the black pepper, easy on the sugar.

4. Catch up with friends. P. and I have been incredibly fortunate to make some lifelong friends here in the Thunderdome (as one of those friends calls India). When you suffer mildly from temporary melancholy, few things lift the spirits like hot chai, digestive biscuits, and comparing notes in excruciating, exquisite detail about the dolor of mosquito-borne illnesses.

5. Work. Crank out new paintings, hustle sales, prepare for upcoming shows and lock down gallery dates for 2011. And whilst doing that, catch up on NPR's All Songs Considered podcasts (Bob Boilen cracks me up; he's totally that socks-and-Birkenstock-wearing, root vegetable-roasting music teacher the kids in band idolized in high school). But what's even better than listening to Bob Boilen while painting is that P. comes back from his week of field research tomorrow and I get to hang out with the huz. Which I've learned from experience is the very best way to overcome pony-death and/or your standard late-February blues. So things are looking up, chickens.

Thanks for all the truly thoughtful notes about Lemon. My parents and sisters have been reading your comments with much tenderness, surprise, and appreciation. It's amazing to have a community of complete strangers united by animal love, which is, as my friend Nora put it, the very purest kind of love.