Welcome to the latest issue of Weekly Special, a food-art newsletter by Andrea Gyorody.
If you’ve landed here but you’re not yet subscribed, you can do that right now:
First, Happy Juneteenth! If you haven’t already, go support a Black-owned business today (and every day).
This week(end), I’m trying out something new. I’ve put together a list—a Smörgåsbord, if you will—of food-art morsels gathered recently from the internet. It’s a mix of articles, podcasts, artworks, videos, and announcements that runs the gamut from sweet to savory. If you have tips for future Smörgåsbords (or however you pluralize that word), please email them to weeklyspecial@substack.com!
Before we get to the good stuff, a quick note: if you’re in LA, I’m opening a show next Friday! It’s an exhibition that puts the work of German artist Joseph Beuys (the subject of my dissertation) in conversation with a handful of contemporary LA artists: Beatriz Cortez and rafa esparza, veronique d’entremont, Candice Lin, and Kandis Williams. (And yes, there is some food-art.) The show will be on view downtown at Track 16 Gallery through September 12, with an opening on Friday, June 25 between 5 and 9pm. Come through!
Your Internet Smörgåsbord
Pansa del Publico
Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio has created a sculptural, functional beehive oven in Los Angeles State Historic Park, as part of a month-long program on art and healing. You can visit the work during the park’s open hours through July 25, but you should also check out the series of related events co-hosted by Clockshop and OxyArts. I just attended a demo of the oven—which was used to make incredibly succulent Salvadoran chicken and rice—and I’m looking forward to more!
“Food - Media - Senses” Conference
If you want to spend two days listening to papers and discussions on topics such as “The Iconicity of the Plate” or “Haptic Taste in Polish Contemporary Art,” look no further! Register here (scroll down for English) for the “Food - Media - Senses” online conference, taking place July 1 and 2.
Meg Miller on Krystal Mack
Meg Miller speaks with Baltimore artist Krystal Mack about her project PalatePALETTE, which looks at “the people who were actively working to strengthen Baltimore’s local food system during the pandemic and imagining new possibilities for abolishing food apartheid afterwards.” The content is heavy and hopeful; the visuals are stunning.
BBC’s “The Food Programme”
“Eat Your Art Out: How Art Makes Us Eat,” the most recent episode of the BBC podcast “The Food Programme,” takes listeners on a tour of various corners of the food-art world, with curator and art cookbook collector Cedar Lewisohn; Cooking Sections, an artist duo with a major show up at Tate Britain; and Maite Gomez-Rejon, founder of Art Bites. The episode also includes a recipe for Mango-Pineapple Mezcal Margaritas, which I plan on drinking all summer.
Mega Kawaii Miniatures
I’m obsessed with these mini vignettes by @tanaka_tatsuya, on view now (in Oita, Japan, alas) in an exhibition called Miniature Life. Would love to be on the receiving end of these bouncing fireballs of ikura!
Daniella Britto on Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill
Daniella—incidentally an Oberlin alum I got to know a few years ago when she was still a student—writes this about Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill’s current exhibition at MoMA:
At the center of the gallery, sculptures made from Nylon pantyhose filled with deep-brown ground tobacco repeatedly take on rabbit, human, and hybrid human-rabbit figures. “Kiss” (2019) and “Exchange” (2019) both recall folded legs. Draped atop elevated white display tables, the sculptures pose like items for sale at a clothing store, inviting reflection on tobacco’s mass consumption while underscoring the routinely outsourced and concealed labor involved in the plant’s production.
The Plastic Bag Store Installation
UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance is sponsoring The Plastic Bag Store Installation, which consists, as far as I can tell, of a grocery store simulacra in which every single thing is crafted from plastic bags. Between June 30 and July 11, you can visit the installation (downtown in the Arts District) with a timed ticket, and you can also purchase tickets to one of several immersive, multimedia activations of the installation. I’ll miss this entirely, but if you go, please report back!
Delicious Doodles
This article in Food & Wine is sadly bereft of images, but it has lots of recs for food illustrators you should follow on social media. @celebsonsandwiches will change your life.
Jeff Bezos and… the Mona Lisa
Apparently there’s a petition circulating admonishing Jeff Bezos to spend some of his untaxed billions on the Mona Lisa (which is, uh, not for sale), for the sole purpose of eating it. If he eats it from outer space and never returns, I’m here for it.
Khaled Hourani’s “The Colors of the Palestinian Flag”
Curator @serubiri’s recent post of Khaled Hourani’s The Colors of the Palestinian Flag, an image of a watermelon he first painted in 2007 and has since recreated in many formats and places, led me down a long path of articles and posts about the watermelon as a symbol of Palestinian resistance. I’d especially recommend the delightful Instagram posts by art historian / illustrator (and former classmate) @gaytor_al, which break down the history with wit and legit sources!
Felt Banana Split
This stop-action video of the making of a teeny tiny felt banana split is the cutest thing (besides my own kid) I’ve seen in a while.
Book a Night in a Giant Potato
Dirt has a story on The World’s Largest Potato, which has been plopped in a field in Idaho and converted into a Millennial-friendly Airbnb.
Alice Waters in LA!
ICYMI: legendary chef Alice Waters is set to open a new cafe at the Hammer Museum this fall. That museum cafe has had many, many iterations, as I remember well from my days at UCLA, but none remotely this exciting. Can. not. wait.