Where We Create - Meet Sheri of Donuts, Dresses and Dirt

Here is lovely Sheri who blogs at Donuts, Dresses and Dirt about "everything she is most passionate about". I discovered Sheri's blog through Melanie at Inward Facing Girl. Well, the comment section of her blog actually. Don't you do the same? Find a blog you like, scour the list of blogs that they read and hang out in the comments section?

Love Sheri's blog and love just as much how generous she is - with her kudos and sharing of other people's posts on Facebook and twitter. She also has a series called Blove where she highlights her favourite bloggers.

And she is JUST like that in person - generous and passionate and bubbly and charming. I know, because I got to meet her on my last trip to NYC! How lucky am I??!!

Let's hear from Sheri about where she creates...

I sent 3 photos because I create everywhere!

When I’m baking and cooking I’m obviously in my kitchen – which we had built 5 years ago and where I truly LIVE in my house (pictured is my latest creation – homemade s’mores!).

My drafting table (in our family room) is where I draw up plans for clients’ gardens. I have my talented older son’s artwork all around me, which is always so inspiring!

Finally – the couch in our family room is where I typically write my blog. Feet up, blanket on my lap.

What time of day do you do your work and why?

Loaded question! With 3 kids (ages 3, 15 and 20), my own business and a house to run I have to fit the work in where and when I can. Forget about no two days being alike – no TWO HOURS are! I do the bulk of my work during Noah’s nap-time and when he goes to sleep. The early mornings are for fine-tuning (blurry, late-night eyes are the worst proofreaders!) and kitchen prep.

What's your go-to snack when you are feeling peckish?

Salty? Cashews. Sweet? Sour belts. Both? Kettle corn.

When you are procrastinating, what do you do?

I let myself read one article that I’ve bookmarked and planned to read. It’s a break in my routine and I can cross something off the “to-do” list. That, or I iron.

So go over there and look around. You'll enjoy what you find, trust me!

Rhubarb Chutney

I love rhubarb. When I was a kid growing up I remember a huge rhubarb plant in the garden. Maybe it wasn't that huge but it seemed huge to me at 6. I imagined that in amongst the giant leaves lived dinosaurs.

Rhubarb pie and crisp and crumble. Even raw rhubarb - munching on a sun-warmed stalk.

And today, it's rhubarb chutney.

Think sharp cheese and artisanal bread. A thick, meaty bread.

Or pan fried chicken breast. Dip a chicken breast in a bit of flour. Heat up the frying pan and then add a bit of olive oil. Saute one side til golden and then flip once to do the other side. It's done when the meat thermometer says about 180F. Around 5 minutes. Top with the chutney.

1 tbsp olive oil

1 small onion, chopped fine

2 garlic cloves, minced (you can drop to one clove if you aren't a huge fan of garlic)

1 inch ginger, peeled and grated

1/3 c dry white wine (I used a dry rose instead)

1/3 c chopped golden raisins

1/2 c sugar

12 oz rhubarb, cut 1/4 inch thick

Heat medium sized sauce pan and add oil. Saute onions, garlic and ginger about 5 minutes until the onion is translucent.  Remove from heat and add wine and raisins. Return to heat, and boil for one minute. Add sugar and stir til dissolved. Add half the rhubarb and bring to a boil.

Simmer, partly covered, for five minutes or until the rhubarb is partly broken down. Add rest of rhubarb and bring to a boil, cooking for a minute or so until it begins to soften. Cool completely. (courtesy of Martha Stewart)

It'll keep for a week or two in the fridge. Enjoy! 

Friday links!

Happy Friday everyone! It's been a good week - birthday week for me. Diplomat cake and a book of photographs by Annie Liebovitz. Perfect. Well, except for the part where the babysitter fell asleep and we had to miss our dinner out. Gourmet take out burgers coupled with a dry rose saved the day.

I always enjoy reading Woody Allen's pieces in the New Yorker but here he is reading one of them! (as an aside, wouldn't you love to time travel back to the sixties and see him in a club in the Village doing stand up? That'd be just before you'd catch Tom & Jerry [who became Simon & Garfunkel] nearby).

You know how we all love to see images of art on screen? Well, and in person of course. How about images of their installation? Here's the Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory. I'm a little stressed just looking at the pictures - no dropping! More on the site - modern pieces too.

 

And from Neil Gaiman's recent commencement address: 

"Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Make the world a more interesting place for being here. Make. Good. Art."

Watch his entire speech - inspiring! No really - watch it.

Great news! Annie is coming back to Broadway this fall - opens November 8th (previews October 3rd). I know one six year old who is going to be thrilled to see it. This is the same six year old who sings "It's A Hard Knock Life" while pretending to be an orphan and washing the kitchen floor. (If you plan on buying it, get the Disney version with Alan Cumming and Kathy Bates and Victor Garber - the best version on DVD).

You know that I went to Girl Crush Seattle last weekend? Some wrap up posts here, here, here and here. You MUST go if you can swing it - check the Jealous Curator's sidebar for future dates and locations. Road trip with some friends perhaps? And best of all, Melanie's post was featured on Decor8! Huzzah to her!!!

What's up this weekend with everyone? Found anything interesting that I should be reading or looking at?  I'll be visiting family - think various cousins for the girl and aunties and uncles and grandparents plus a playground or two and a bit of swimming as well.

Enjoy yourself and make something and get back to me.

Finding Inspiration - What Cindy Sherman Taught Me

One of the first modern artists and photographers that I was aware of when I was a kid was Cindy Sherman. It was the film stills. I don't remember when or where I first saw them. Don't forget, I grew up outside of a mid-size prairie city. It was about as suburban as you can get.

    

I didn't know anyone who was into art. I didn't have anyone in my life to introduce me to art or artists. I just remember always being aware of Cindy Sherman. I must have seen a photograph of her work in the newspaper or in a magazine. 

      

   

“I didn’t want to make what looked like art,” Cindy Sherman says about her earliest works, explaining that “film has always kind of been more influential to me than the art world.” 

   

When I took a photo class from Justin Hackworth at the ALT Summit Channel he encouraged all of us to see photographs in person. Yes, a book is fine and we can see soooo much online but see them face to face. When I heard that MOMA was doing a retrospective of Cindy Sherman I decided that I HAD to see it. To see them in person. 

   

I'm still thinking about it.

   

You go to the top floor of MOMA. Up the escalators. Up and up. Turn right, walk through a small gift shop area and then swing around left. Then stop and gasp. Before you are five more than lifesize portraits of Cindy Sherman on the wall. Not framed and hung. On.the.wall. About 20 feet tall. And that is just the beginning.

   

   

It's an exceptional show. Not too much but instead, if anything, too little. I would have enjoyed seeing more, much more, of her earliest works. There are a few - a short film she made in art school and a photo of her playing dress up at age 11. They easily demonstrate her precocious abilities and vision. There is an excerpt of her art school era film in the video near the end of the post.

   

(As an aside, last year's de Kooning exhibit at MOMA went on and on and on - it needed to edited down.)

  

   

She uses photoshop now. And green screen technology. I don't have a problem with that - Ansel Adams dodged and burned in the darkroom. 

   

"People think because it's photography it's not worth as much, and because it's a woman artist, you're still not getting as much - there's still definitely that happening. I'm still really competitive when it comes to, I guess, the male painters and male artists. I still think that's really unfair."

"The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told."

   

Look at the photo below. Then look at the giant toes at the bottom right. Her historical photos all have some quirk.

   

   

"We're all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don't spend any time, or think they don't, on preparing themselves for the world out there - I think that ultimately they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the world."

   

You know that I am curious about where we all create - well, here is where Cindy creates: 

   

   

Here is an excerpt from a PBS show about transformations that included Cindy Sherman talking about her art.

   

Watch Transformation on PBS. See more from ART:21.

   

And here's a cartoon from the May 14, 2012 - you know that you're part of the zeitgeist when you are in the New Yorker:

   

 

So what did Cindy Sherman teach me? How am I different having seen her work face to face in front of me? I think to be true to my own vision. To do what moves me. To do what inspires me. To not play to the crowd. To achieve excellence in my photos and my writing. 

   

There's still that Ira Glass gap between my vision and my execution but perhaps that will always be the case - will any of us ever be able to create and make what we dream?

New York City - shopping and walking

When I visit NYC I walk. And walk. A hundred blocks a day is not unheard of. It's a walking city and to appreciate the buzz and the energy and the smells and the looks and overhear the most amazing conversations, you do need to be on foot as much as possible. 

And when I walk I do a bit of shopping and I do a bit of eating too. So let's get started on a few of the places from my most recent trip.

On my very first trip to NYC a zillion years ago (before I met the man), I went to Tender Buttons at 62nd between 3rd and Lex. I try and go on most visits. It isn't a huge place and the shop has been in this location since 1965. Just think, characters on Mad Men could shop here! I think it would be Joan's mom, how about you? Or maybe Peggy to spruce up an old dress? They have an amazing selection up to and including vintage and antique buttons.

I hadn't been to Chelsea Market before despite great intentions on various trips. That does surprise me because it is only a few blocks away from one of my favourite coffee places, Cafe Grumpy on 20th between 8th and 9th Avenue. Chelsea Market has a bit of a reputation for being overpriced (you Toronto readers can liken it to the 5 thieves in Summerhill on Yonge Street) but it is all great quality in a stunning location - the renovated old Nabisco factory. I had the most amazing scone and cookies at Amy's Bread in the market -  a cherry cheese scone and a miniature orange butter cookie and a miniature kitchen sink cookie. Hey, I was walking 100 blocks a day!

 

Let's move east to Greenwich Village. It's not a long walk away at all.

I met Sheri Silver of Donuts, Dresses and Dirt  for coffee on Sullivan Street just a couple of blocks south of Washington Square Park. We met at Third Rail Coffee. Now I guess that it's the closest place for coffee to the park but I can safely say that it has the BEST pulled shots close to the park. 

Washington Square Park is at the tail end of renovations - the old asphalt humps in the playground are long gone. I won't bore you with the history (as an aside, if you do love historical walking tours, go with Big Onion. PhD candidates in history lead the walks in every 'hood in NYC), but the park is oozing in it. 

Check out the bottom right photo in the collage below - yes that is a grand piano that someone dragged/pulled/pushed into the middle of the park to play. The high class busker.

Sheri led me around the West Village where I hadn't spent a lot of time. All of Greenwich Village is picturesque - while the city is primarily on a grid (great foresight at the time), the older streets in the Village twist and turn. The architecture is beautiful. If I lived in NYC (since this is a fantasy I'd have that big bag of money and a  trunk of gold doubloons), I'd live in the Village.

One of our stops was the quaint and yummy Sockerbit - a Swedish candy store. In addition to having THE best candy - so fresh and tasty, this shop is one of the many reasons why I adore NYC. In a city of 10 million people a couple can have the inspiration to start a shop selling just Swedish candy and then just make it happen. And not only survive but flourish. No matter your niche, if you do it well, you will find a market for it. And they do it well - charming and friendly service.

When the man and I first travelled together to NYC we wanted a yummy meal. And we decided to go to Babbo, one of Mario Batali's restaurants. Still thinking of the gnocchi after all these years. It isn't huge and if you want a primetime table you do have to book a month in advance. But, here's a tip. Don't say I never do anything for you, dear readers! It's on Waverly Place just NW of Washington Square Park. It opens at 4:30 on Sunday evenings and 5 other nights. If you don't have a reservation, go Monday night and line up about 15-30 minutes before it opens. Maybe grab a coffee at Third Rail and walk a few blocks over to wait. Then you are pretty much assured of getting not only a seat at the bar as a walk in but a table. Now don't sue me if it doesn't work - keep in mind holiday season, etc. Like I said, Monday nights are the best bet.

It's pricey but the food is incredible. And it's neighbourhood-y - the staff is fantastically friendly and the service is as good as it gets. And if you don't get in, zoom  to the south of the park and go to Lupa at 170 Thompson, another Batali restaurant and more lowkey than Babbo. Very welcoming of families.

(The photo below is the window of Babbo).

And my dear friends, these are some of the places that I stopped in at while walking around NYC. Here I am in my cab to Newark on my rainy last morning. The only day that it rained. Lucky me!

I'll be back. Of course I'll be back.