A Summer Pizza with Cherry Tomatoes, Zucchini and Eggplant

I look forward every summer to the time my garden is producing the vegetables for this delicious pizza. With its fresh taste of herbs setting off the fried zucchini and eggplant, with the sweetness of my favorite Sungold tomatoes, it's a taste of summertime. The recipe is from Deborah Madison's The Greens Cookbook, one of the staples of my cookbook shelf.

1 medium zucchini
1 Japanese eggplant
olive oil
salt and pepper
12 cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped (I use 2 cloves...love garlic!)
2 oz mozzarella cheese, grated or thinly sliced
2 oz Fontina cheese, grated (I use only mozzarella and only 2 to 3 ounces; I don't like a cheesy pizza and want the vegetables to be the stars)
3 Tbs basil, finely chopped
Parmesan
fresh thyme and basil, finely chopped

1. Prepare dough (see recipe below)
2. Slice the zucchini and eggplant diagonally into pieces 3 to 4 inches long and 1/4 inch thick. Place in a bowl and sprinkle with salt and let stand for 1/2 hour to draw out moisture. Blot on paper towels
3. Heat 1/4 inch oil in skillet on high flame. Add vegetables, not crowding them, and fry on each side until golden brown. Drain on paper towels.
4. Dress tomatoes with a tablespoon of olive oil, the garlic, and salt and pepper. Drain them before putting them on pizza.
5. Preheat oven to 500º, using a stone for a good crust.
6. Shape dough and put on well floured (or corn mealed, which is what I use) peel. Brush with olive oil and distribute most of cheese and then basil over it. Arrange zucchini and eggplant in overlapping layers with tomatoes in and around them. Dot with remaining cheese.
7. Slide pizza onto preheated stone and bake for 8 to 12 minutes. I find 10 minutes is about right in my oven.
8. Remove from oven and garnish with freshly grated Parmesan and herbs.

My pizza dough recipe comes from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. These amounts make enough for a 10-11 inch pie, perfect for the recipe above.

1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1/4 teas salt
scant teaspoon active dry yeast dissolved in a little more than 1/2 cup water
1 Tbs plus 1 teas olive oil

1. Mix the flour and salt in a bowl, making a hollow in the center. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and yeast mixture and work together until mixed.
2. Transfer to a board and knead until smooth, around 10 minutes.
3. Or....as I do, use a food processor, placing the flour and salt in the bowl, adding the dissolved yeast and water plus olive oil as the slowly as the blades spin. Process until dough forms a ball on top of the blades. Remove dough and knead by hand for a few minutes.
4. Put 1 teaspoon of olive oil in a large bowl and place the dough in it, turning it around so it is coated with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise in a very warm place for about 3 hours until it is doubled in bulk.
5. Form the dough into a ball and let it rest for a few minutes, then roll and stretch it out into a 10-11 inch circle.

A New Painting: "Bristles"

Bristles, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 x 7 3/4 inches.

Wide cylinders of bright bristles were stacked along a fence at a dairy farm. I had no idea what their purpose was, but I did know that I loved the image, a very unusual one for me. The repeating rounds, the deep central hole, the thin lines radiating unevenly from centers, were all a visual delight.




You can see something of the layering of lines of different value and color in this enlargement. I realize that this amount of detail must look as though painting it was a daunting prospect, but it was actually quite simple because of the qualities of egg tempera. Tempera dries immediately, and it can be a very crisp paint, which allows me to use rapidly layered brush strokes. I paint the darks first, then add mid-tones then lights, often going back and forth until I'm satisfied. It is also simple to glaze color –washing a thin layer of a darker hue over a lighter – which makes it very easy to adjust tone and color. I don't even use very tiny brushes; the lines in this painting were painted with a #5 round synthetic bristle brush, and I moved my hand quickly, not at all deliberately; it is more like a lively dance than a slow march. I realize that in a previous post I'd admonished myself to slow down, but in the case of these bristles, working too slowly would have deadened the work.




I thought I'd show the painting after I first washed in some color. I used to do a black and white ink under-drawing for my egg temperas, but for the past couple of years I have abandoned that practice. I begin very broadly, with the general shapes and colors in place; I then gradually refine the drawing, using a pencil and ruler when needed. I sometimes feel as though I'm actually making a "thing" as I paint, bringing forth something visually solid from the flat panel surface.

At the Shelburne Museum: Abstraction in the Decorative Arts

For many centuries, in quite different cultures, abstract patterns have been used to decorate objects designed for everyday or ceremonial use. What most comes to my mind are pots with geometric designs, ancient or traditional Native American. There is a rich history of pattern in textile work; with quilting there are two strong recent abstract traditions: the simple drama of colored shapes in Amish quilts, and the remarkable inventiveness and modernity of the quilts of Gee's Bend. So, while I was wandering through the incredible collections at the Shelburne Museum, I thought I'd concentrate on abstraction. The photo above is a detail of a quilt made around 1900; its pattern is called Pincushion and it is rarely seen. I love the way the circles are held in larger concentric squares of color, making the design very complex.




This is a detail of a quilt made around 1890-1900, which looks at first glance like a crazy quilt, with no definable pattern. But if you look carefully, you'll see that the triangular shapes that surround the open diamonds are actually points of an eight-pointed star whose centers are wildly mixed shapes and colors.




Quilt patterns are often very clever: here a design is produced by flipping colors and by turning the shapes within their small squares. One of the names for this pattern is Drunkard's Path and was often associated with the temperance movement. It's also known as Robbing Peter to Pay Paul and Wanderer's Path.




This American quilt from the 1940s uses the Hexagonal pattern, which is thought to be one of the oldest pieced patterns, since it appeared in a ladies magazine in 1835. It may have been influenced by mosaic tile design, which to me looks very likely. The maker of this quilt used many different commercially printed fabrics which give it a marvelously dizzying quality.





This tapestry-like fabric with an interlocking pattern of multi-hued feathery shapes for a man's vest must have made him strut like a peacock. And for extra effect, the inverted triangular lines of buttons and the drama of black velvet.




The blobby painting with little circles on this English compote of the early 19th century speaks of someone who was having a very good time with their glazes, enjoying freedom and invention and sharing it with us.




The museum had several platters from the late 18th-early 19th century made with the technique of combed slipware; a tool with evenly spaced teeth is dragged across the fluid slip making a pattern that is regular but not rigid, that has a feeling of flow, as though someone had painted the lines with a watercolor brush.




What a wonderful array of color and shape and design in this case of 19th century Mochaware. The wavy and straight lines, the dots and swirls on vessels of many shapes and sizes made my eyes bounce around happily. I'm particularly fond of the repeating curves, like vibrant waves, and the white-on-black leaning leaf shapes. I feel great admiration for the craftspeople who had the skill to make these pieces look so fresh and effortless.




There was a small room at the museum given over to displaying a collection of glass canes, which for me were pure pleasure; the translucent nature of glass makes the color in it that much more vivid as light plays over and through. I couldn't help but think of holidays and candy canes looking at these fanciful objects. And looking at these objects, I wonder why it is that some people have such a difficult time with abstract painting when they are surrounded by abstract pattern. Are paintings judged too differently, or design valued too little?

Previous blog post from the Shelburne Museum:
At the Shelburne Museum: Daily Life

"The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating"

Many of us live with animals, dog or cat or maybe a hamster, but much of the animal kingdom is too hidden or small for notice, and they rarely enter our homes as companions. The writer Elizabeth Tova Bailey, in her thoughtful and touching book, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, describes just such a companionship during a time of bed-bound severe illness. To cheer her, a friend brought Bailey a flowerpot with some violets and added a snail that she happened to find. For a year, this little creature held Bailey's attention as she watched its wanderings and learned more about its life. She wrote:

Everything about a snail is cryptic, and it was precisely this air of mystery that first captured my interest.

And I followed along as a fascinated reader, as the snail left its flowerpot to look for food, leaving little square holes in pieces of paper. Later housed in a terrarium, the snail laid eggs stored until they could be hatched in safety. Each small snail adventure was described with loving attention, so how could I not also come to admire the ingenuity of snail design. The snail in the photo above is a White-lipped snail, the same as in Bailey's book, though it was living in the wild when I took that picture, having a nice mushroom meal. I don't know the species of the much smaller snail below, who was feeding on a plant alongside the pond. It is a beautiful little mollusk, with a long golden shell, looking almost translucent. Its tiny tentacles have delicate dark lines rising to the end, where its eyes are located. After reading this book, I felt an added tenderness for the small beings I usually overlook: the snails, the various caterpillars large and small, the many types of flying insects. The world is a more complex and wondrous place if we pay attention to the lives of the tiny creatures around us.

At the Shelburne Museum: Daily Life

The Shelburne Museum is one of the most unique museum experiences you can have. On 45 acres in Vermont's Champlain Valley is a collection of 18th and 19th century New England structures (including a paddle wheeled steamer) filled with art and artifacts of the period, including carriages and sleighs, folk art, decorative arts, tools and machinery. The museum was established in 1947 by Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960); her parents were collectors of European and Asian art, but she became a voracious collector of Americana. I went to visit the museum yesterday and had an absolutely marvelous time wandering through the collections; my only regret being the dim light which made it difficult to photograph a lot of objects and spaces I loved. But I did come home with many images, which I'll share with you in several posts in coming days.

I thought I'd begin my tour with some of the historic houses that were moved to the Shelburne Museum, such as this "Settler's House", which is from Charlotte, Vermont and was built around 1800. The photo above shows the simple log and chinking construction with wooden shingles. I think of it as the kind of shelter a family would put up quickly when they were clearing their land, before they had time or resources to build a "real" house.




As you can see from these photographs of this settler's house, the interior was also very simple, with only bare necessities for living their lives. It would not have been very comfortable in the long Vermont winters.




There was another small cabin, minimally furnished, that was set up to show the residence of a jailor (notice the hanging handcuffs, and see the last image which is the jail). I love the quiet simplicity of table and chairs, with hanging shelf displaying cups and tinware dishes. Along one wall was a pallet, a thin hard bed; on the other wall was a small stove. A tableau like this is so touching.



Two of the most beautiful houses that were moved to the Shelburne are the Stencil House and the Prentis house. The Stencil House, a classic cape style from 1804, was from Sherburne, NY. Well preserved stencils had been discovered on its walls, so Mrs. Webb saved it from demolition and moved it to the museum in 1954. The salt box style Prentis house was built in Hadley, MA in 1773 and moved to the museum in 1955.




This is the front door of the Stencil House with divided lights over the door made up of blown colored glass.




The hearth of Prentis House has been reconstructed and furnished to appear as it might have in the 18th-19th century. Since my own house is quite old and used to have a massive central chimney, I like to imagine how the kitchen would have looked with its original fireplace; on a somewhat smaller scale, it might have been very much like this.




Alongside the kitchen was a pantry room, with shelves holding vessels and bowls that are from the period; the shapes are beautiful, designed for a purpose. Prentis House was named for Katherine Prentis Murphy, who donated most of the furnishings for the house. She had been known as a designer of period rooms for various museums. I must remember that these interiors have been created; they are an interpretation of what a house of this period looked like.




The wall stencils of Stencil House are very well preserved because they were painted on wood panels rather than plaster (around 1830) and because they had been hidden under many layers of wallpaper. The stenciling is unusual in that it is not confined to a border along the ceiling, but covers the walls.




Part of everyday life would have been going to the general store, so the museum has a building full of the goods a 19th century shopper might have seen. The top part of the image above shows some of the candy on display; the bottom section is from the apothecary, where patent medicines––"Pettit's Blood Purifier", "Hanford's Balsam of Myrhh"––would have been sold, along with the herbs shown above.




There were many wonderfully shaped door latches and hinges on buildings at the museum.




Lastly, here is a jail building, which came from Castleton, Vermont and was built in 1890. Though a jail can't quite be considered part of daily life, I wanted to include it because of its slate construction. That part of Vermont has several slate quarries, so its use would be natural there. I think the long, narrow stones of subtle grays make a beautifully textured and rhythmic surface. The jail adds another aspect to the story being told at the Shelburne Museum.

A New Textile: "Light Red/Green Ground"

Light Red/Green Ground, hand dyed wool on linen, 11 x 10 inches.

This new piece is a part of my series of Figure/Ground works in which I attempt to create a composition in which no element takes precedence over another: no one shape should appear to the the positive, or figure, as opposed to the negative, or ground. You can see some of the previous textiles in this series in this blog post. When I was working on the sketch, I felt that the two semi-circular shapes might demand too much attention, so I tried to balance the equation by mixing a cooler, grayer red by adding some of the green to it, and a warmer green by adding a yellow. I'm not at all sure that the green shape holds its own in this equation...what do you think?




In this detail you can see that I hook an edge around each shape, so that they have visual equivalence. If I had edged only the red shape, it would have appeared more solid and the green would have seemed to slip behind it. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter if the challenge I've set for myself is successful, as long as the piece has a satisfying presence.

Kitagawa Utamaro, The Engaging Type, from the series Ten Types in the Physiognomic Study of Women, c. 1792-93; color woodcut with mica ground; 15 x 10 inches.

I keep several art books in my work room––most of the others are in the studio––for inspiration and reference. I particularly love the subtle natural colors of Japanese woodcuts. When I was looking through the catalog Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan, I found this lovely print and decided that I would try to mix dyes to achieve its beautifully balanced red and green, colors I would not have discovered on my own, for which I am grateful.

A Walk in the Woods: The Cycle of Death and Life

After storms and heavy winds I sometimes find my woodland path blocked by a newly downed tree. A few days ago this large tree toppled from its base and scattered needles and broken branches, with still attached branches spinning from the trunk like so many agitated arms. I might have a twinge of unhappiness at seeing a tree lying on the ground like this, but it is part of a healthy process of renewal.




Throughout the woods there are bases of trees upended, sometimes with entire root systems brought up into the air. Trunks lie here and there, scattered on the ground in varying stages of decomposition. .



Dead trees or partial trunks still stand, where they provide food and shelter for various creatures and organisms, which in turn help the process of decay. The insects living in this dead tree attracted Pileated woodpeckers, which dug deep holes in the bark hunting for them, scattering woodchips as they hammered.




Over the past couple of years I've watched this grand tree stump break apart and sink further onto the forest floor where unseen organisms are busy at work helping to return the nutrients from what had been the living tree to the soil beneath the layer of organic matter. It's a beautiful, rich system and a lesson for us in how to maintain the health of our soil and our earth.

The Wild Garden

At the corner of my road and the neighbor's, a small garden has sprung up. In the spring Siberian iris bloom and now, it's double daylilies along with wildflowers. I did not plant either of the garden flowers there; they seeded themselves, perhaps with the help of some birds, and now thrive alongside a culvert. In the fields around my house, alongside the stone walls, garden plants take root and spread.




Some plants, like plume poppy, turned out to be too invasive to be near more sedate flowers, so I dug them up and tossed them behind the barn. Now they are happily growing between brambles and grasses and they put on a dramatic show in their safe new location.




Filipendula rubra, or Queen of the Prairie is an easily naturalized plant in the wet conditions of much of my land. I had originally planted it in my large flower border, but later felt it didn't belong there, so put some near the pond. It has spread by itself from the west to the east of the pond and looks quite beautiful intermingled with grasses. There is also some white Filipendula ulmaria, meadowsweet, growing behind the pink.




I love the gracefully curving flowers of gooseneck loosestrife, but in my flower border, which is quite wet, it runs rampant. How I envy those who have well behaved clumps of this plant in their borders. So, I dug it up and threw it next to the pond where it is flourishing without crowding out floral neighbors.




The herb marjoram has self sown around my house from a small initial planting: it's in the field alongside the garden, in the lawn everywhere, at the edges of the vegetable garden. I love its purple flowers, which dry beautifully for winter bouquets.




This old fashioned plant, Bouncing Bet (Soapwort), was growing among the common daylilies in front of the house when I moved here. It takes care of itself, spreading among other plants with underground rhizomes, and is often classified as a wildflower. I think of it as a blowsy flower in its robust untidiness, but it has a lovely scent and is nice to see this time of year among the drooping daylily leaves.

As the years have passed I find myself more lax about policing the errant plants and flowers around my property. I am trying to dampen my penchant for strict order so that I can enjoy the exuberance of flowers and ferns and "weeds".

A New Painting: "Three Pipes"

Three Pipes, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 x 4 1/2 inches.

The three cylindrical volumes of differing color, texture and direction are what interested me in this image. The corrugation of the topmost pipe added rhythm and complexity and was a challenge to paint. I wanted to leave the form a little "soft", not as crisp as I could make it (though I realize that to you it probably looks very precise). It was very difficult to photograph this painting because the balance of reds in the orange pipe and in the corrugated pipe tended to work against each other; I finally realized I could isolate the orange and adjust it, so now the photo is closer to the actual painting. I find the orange pipe's bulging form very satisfying and hope it doesn't overpower the rest.




In this detail you can see some of the surface irregularities in the browns––the texture of the parchment and bits of dust––thrown into relief by the light from above, since I shoot in natural light under a skylight. When you see the painting straight on, the texture is not evident. While working on this painting, I kept telling myself "paint slowly" because I've noticed that when I run into trouble it's because I've taken a large brush and worked the volumes too quickly––an especially strong temptation with cylinders––which leads to mistakes and over-painting and wiping off paint, etc etc. Patience!

Nostalgia as Inspiration

When I visit the Jersey shore, childhood memories come bubbling up: the delicious honeysuckle whose nectar my father taught us to sip...




The library of my youthful summers; one summer in particular stays with me, which I spent combing the stacks for any and every book on myths of different cultures...




The homes with porches filled with summer furniture, a table set aside for a picture puzzle for rainy days. All these things and more touch my heart. In his novel Ignorance, Milan Kundera explores the concept of nostalgia, and how it affects those who left their homes in Czechoslovakia with the takeover of the communists and their feeling about return in 1989. In his second chapter he writes "The Greek word for 'return' is nostos. Algos means 'suffering'. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return." A simpler definition might be a "longing for home". The word nostalgia, which I think expresses a beautiful feeling, has been diminished and belittled by being associated with the excessively sentimental.

Chinese Maple, Catskill, N.Y., 1981, oil on canvas, 14 x 28 inches.

My earliest exhibited work consisted of paintings of domestic architecture, which allowed me to balance the strong planar geometries with architectural details. When I began doing this series I thought of it in those abstract terms, not considering the emotional coloring that comes with lived-in houses. After some time, though, I realized that my childhood summers at the shore had a tremendous influence on my choice of subject matter: my parents would take us on drives to look at houses in towns around Bradley Beach, where they were likely to be large and beautiful. From a young age I was taught to notice and admire the domestic architecture of small towns.

Home from School, Unadilla Forks, N.Y., 1985, oil on canvas, 22 x 50 inches.

As years passed, I began to include the landscape around houses and outbuildings, and my focus slowly shifted to the agricultural landscape and then to its implements. But I believe that my nostalgia, my sweet feeling, for the architecture of summer was a powerful force in my early painting choices. Have any of you been inspired by your "longing for home"?

At the Shore: Sculpted Hedges

As often happens to me when I am in a somewhat familiar place, I notice something that never struck me before, something that was always there, but never moved to the front of my consciousness. Thoreau has an apt phrase "...we find only the world we look for.", which I quote in this blog post. So during my short trip to the New Jersey shore, I suddenly noticed all the shaped hedges and trees in gardens throughout the borough of Deal. Above is the fanciful arrangement of shrubs and tree in front of the Catholic Church. It looks more like a setting for Alice in Wonderland, where magical happenings might occur, than the entrance to a serious place of worship.




Some of the sculpted hedges are privet and some are evergreens. Here the large plants are cut in swooping volumes, great curving masses whose shapes are emphasized by their straight sides. I wish I'd asked a gardener who I saw where he got his ideas for this sculpture; it is the professional workers who make these forms, not the owners of the large houses.




I love this grouping of a large round cake in front of a huddled array of tall forms, looking as though they are leaning together for comfort or for a good gossip, or maybe they're waiting for a slice.




The artificial nature of the shaped trees is in keeping with the grand formality of the homes. It's hard to imagine seeing this kind of gardening here in Vermont, where the wild of the woods is part of the garden aesthetic.




At another beautiful old home, the muffin rounds of shrubs are contrasted with the dripping lines of parallel leaves of a cherry tree. The tree, though not trimmed, has a remarkably formal presence.




Lastly, here is a marvelously inventive hedge, one that I didn't see repeated anywhere else: pointed cones rise up from the body of the rectangular hedge, adding a surprising bit of geometry, little hills above a flat plain. None of the hedges I saw came up to the complexity and exuberance of some of the most imaginative topiary, but I certainly enjoyed seeing their artful shapes in the gardens.