Two Potato Salads, Italian and Middle Eastern

I realize that it might be a little late in the season to be sharing potato salad recipes; after all, isn't it a perfect picnic or barbeque food? But warm weather isn't yet over, and potato salad is good for lunch any time of year. The Italian potato salad, pictured above, is from the brilliant Marcella Hazan, in her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. It is a very simple recipe: potatoes, olive oil, red wine vinegar and salt. Use a waxy boiling potato; I used Red Norlands. I took the photo above in late July, when the potatoes were "new", not yet having converted their sugars into starch. They are very delicious at that stage and I love them in this salad even though they don't make a perfect picture because the slices break apart.

Boil potatoes in their skins until tender. When cool enough to handle, but still warm to hot, remove the skins and cut into 1/4 inch slices. Place in a bowl and sprinkle generously with red wine vinegar while still warm. Hazan's recipe calls for about 3 Tbs vinegar for 1 1/2 pounds of potatoes. When ready to serve, add salt to taste and dress fairly generously with good olive oil. Taste, and add more vinegar if needed.




This is a recipe I grew up with, that my mother made often. It is another simple recipe but has more ingredients than the Italian version above. Here there are potatoes, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and allspice. I like to add some thinly sliced onion, red or yellow, and chopped parsley as garnish. I remember that when I was a little girl, my grandmother used to make this salad by slicing the potatoes rather than cutting them in squares; she also used cumin instead of allspice. In my cousin Poopa Dweck's book Aromas of Aleppo, she uses both spices; I stick with my mother's recipe:

Boil waxy potatoes until tender. Peel them when they're easy to handle and cut into one inch chunks. When they are cool, dress with a liberal amount of olive oil, lemon juice and allspice. When I made the salad pictured above, I boiled one pound of potatoes, and for that amount I used 2 Tbs of olive oil, 1 1/2 Tbs lemon juice and 1/2 teas allspice and a sprinkling of salt. Of course you can vary these amounts to taste. Garnish with some onion slices and parsley if desired.

A New Painting: "Draped"

Draped, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 7 x 5 1/4 inches.

My working title for this painting was simply Blue/Green, but after giving my last painting an active title, Tied, I thought I would title this after the way the black hoses rest on the circular form: they are draped over it. There is other activity in the image: blue/red and green planes intersect at angles, so the curving black serves to stabilize the composition. I wasn't sure about keeping the rust red in the area above the hose, but ended up feeling that I liked the additional color there; I'm not sure it was the correct decision though. Any thoughts?

Sometimes I am very lucky in the images I find, such as with Tied, which I'm able to turn into strong paintings at just the right size. But it doesn't always happen. Although I like Draped, I don't see it as one of my best. Do you sometimes do work that you think: wow, I wish I could do that again! Don't we sometimes jump ahead of ourselves, make a brilliant leap forward, then drop back and have to slog ahead in an ordinary way?

On Dutch Golden Age Painting: The Brilliant Essays of Zbigniew Herbert

Torrentius, Emblematic still life with flagon, glass, jug and bridle, 1614; oil on panel; 20.5 x 19.9 inches.

This is how it happened. Years ago, during my first visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, ....I came upon a canvas by a painter unknown to me.

...How to describe this inner state? A suddenly awakened intense curiosity, sharp concentration with the senses alarmed, hope for an adventure and consent to be dazzled. I experienced an almost physical sensation as if someone called me, summoned me.

This is how Zbigniew Herbert described his first encounter with Torrentius' sole remaining painting. Reading a poet's words about art of the past is very different from reading those of a scholarly treatise. There is passion, and philosophy, a compassionate view of the world, and there are words that elevate and illuminate. A Polish poet and essayist, Herbert takes us on a deep tour of Dutch 17th century painting in his 1991 book Still Life with a Bridle. In the title essay, Herbert writes about the tragic life and brutal death of the artist, in the process describing the society that could not accept someone who lived and worked outside its norms. And yet Herbert also admires the norms; he aims to write about Dutch 17th century painters in a down to earth way, not romanticizing their lives:

The old masters – all of them without exception – could repeat after Racine, "We work to please the public." Which means they believed in the purposefulness of their work and the possibility of interhuman communication. They affirmed visible reality with an inspired scrupulousness and childish seriousness, as if the order of the world and the revolution of the stars, the permanence of the firmament, depended on it.
Let such naiveté be praised.

I remember that during my visit to the Rijksmuseum years ago, I felt overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of paintings of a certain subject matter by a certain artist. Oh, I liked them much better if I saw only one or two church interiors by de Witte, instead of a half dozen. But Herbert's essay "The Price of Art" helps to put this production in a larger context.

Gerard Terborch, Fatherly Admonition, c. 1655

Herbert writes of the difficulty of writing about art:

I know well, too well, all the agonies and vain effort of what is called description, and also the audacity of translating the wonderful language of painting into the language – as voluminous, as receptive as hell – in which court verdicts and love novels are written.

But I read his prose and am transported, even knowing the paintings he describes. I am also envious of his ability to call forth words, to shape sentences into such vivid and true images. He writes about Terborch in an essay "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" and describes the painting above in a lengthy paragraph, of which the following is an except:

Terborch, who painted with such reticence gray and black portraits, gives us in "Fatherly Admonition" a concert of coloristic mastery in difficult chromatic compositions: red, black, matte white, the subdued red of the bed curtain, the low deadly black of the model's collar, and the light, dazzling, joyful white of her dress. Whenever I try to recall this painting of Terborch, I close my eyes and see first of all the heroine of the scene, a "beauty with her back turned" who brightens the darkness like a candle in a precious candlestick, while other persons, objects, details remain unclear, blurred and wavering.

Jan van Goyen, Dunes, 1629

A road through a village, a ferry floating down the river, a hut among dunes, clusters of trees and haystacks, travelers waiting for a ride – these are the typical subjects of van Goven's paintings. Canvases with no anecdote, loosely composed, flimsy and slim, with a weak pulse and nervous outline, they quickly leave their imprint on the memory...When I first saw van Goyen's painting I felt I had waited a long time for just this painter, that he filled a gap in the museum of my imagination I had sensed for a long time.

How beautifully Herbert describes what I would call the "almost-not-thereness" of van Goyen's paintings.

Aelbert Cuyp, Young Herdsman with Cows, c. 1665

What we see in Dutch paintings are everyday things, ordinary views. Herbert wonders about this preference in the essay "The NonHeroic Subject"; why were there so few pictures of war, of battles and heroes, considering that Holland had been through an Eighty Year's War with Spain, finally concluded in 1648. He conjectures that the Dutch were of a "bourgeois-peasant world", for them "war was not a beautiful craft".

On the contrary, what was most important was to save: to protect, to spare, and carry from the storm a sane head and one's belongings.

That the spirit of Erasmus, the 16th century

philosopher from Rotterdam, who valued the virtues of moderation and gentleness above everything else, took power over this small nation.

Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch, 1654, 13.2 x 9 inches

This small painting, painted in the last year of a short life, is the most perfect of pictures: the golden color; the balance of forms against the flat textural expanse of wall; the bird quiet, expectant, calm yet tethered by a delicate chain. It comes close to breaking my heart. Is it at all about freedom, that for the Dutch, Herbert writes,

was something as simple as breathing, looking, and touching objects. It did not need to be defined or beautified. This is why there is no division in their art between what is great and what is small, what is important and unimportant, elevated and ordinary. They painted apples and the portraits of fabric shopkeepers, pewter plates and tulips, with such patience and such love that the images of other worlds and noisy tales about earthly triumphs fade in comparison.

A Revelatory Moment

Several months ago I began a simple meditation practice, helped along by this dvd. I love sitting quietly, several times a week, concentrating on my breathing; it puts life's worries into a grander perspective, reducing their import. Sometimes interesting thoughts about my work come to mind. It's wonderful what floats into your consciousness when you are trying to empty it of the bustle of everyday life. I sit on the floor of my bedroom, next to the east facing windows and often look out at the trees when I first open my eyes. A couple of days ago I looked ahead of me, at my terrycloth bathrobe hanging from a nail on the closet door. Its dark red folds were softly illuminated or sunken into deep shadow; the belt hung down with an end resting on the floor, touched with bits of dust. I felt as if I could see this ordinary robe for the first time, its rich texture, crumpled sewn edges, its touching humanness. The belt reached down, open to the world, vulnerable. This sounds very strange, but I felt a loving tenderness towards my humble bathrobe. And then I realized, Yes! this is what I hope to achieve with my painting: a sense that every object is imbued with beauty and love. I hope to have that modest tender feeling when I paint, and I hope that a viewer will sometimes feel it in the work. I realize that this sounds sentimental, even corny, but it feels true to me; it feels like an essential way of seeing the world. I wonder if any of you have had a similar surprising moment that has revealed your artistic motivations so clearly.

The Patterns of the Monarch

There are many beautiful caterpillars, brightly colored or marvelously fuzzy, and the caterpillar of the Monarch butterfly is one. I spotted this brilliantly striped insect a couple of days ago, on the leaf of a milkweed plant, and was surprised to see one so late in the season. I watched it feed on the edge of a leaf, moving its mouth quickly down its edge – chomp, chomp, chomp – then up again, just like I eat an ear of corn. The pattern of movement also sent me back to the days of the manual typewriter: at the end of each line of type a "ka-ching" with the pressing of the return lever.




Nearby a monarch butterfly was hanging quietly from some grass, its wings closed. I assumed that it was newly hatched from its chrysalis and was drying its wings, but I might be wrong. Its bold patterning of orange and black, with white spots on body and wing edges, is eye-catching and unmistakable when we see them flying about. I find it fascinating that there is no relationship in color or type of pattern from the caterpillar to the butterfly, except that the caterpillar has small white spots on its little black legs, not visible in the photo above. The most remarkable pattern of this butterfly are its patterns of migration: spanning 3 or 4 generations, the monarchs migrate many hundreds of miles each year; our Northeastern Monarchs will journey all the way to Mexico during winter.

In the fragility of lovely butterflies, their floating through air, their metamorphic life cycles and short life spans, we find metaphor, as in Emily Dickinson's poem:

From cocoon forth a butterfly
As lady from her door
Emerged – a summer afternoon –
Repairing everywhere,

Without design, that I could trace,
Except to stray abroad
On miscellaneous enterprise
The clovers understood.

Her pretty parasol was seen
Contracting in a field
Where men made hay, then struggling hard
With an opposing cloud,

Where parties, phantom as herself,
To Nowhere seemed to go
In purposeless circumference,
As 't were a tropic show.

And notwithstanding bee that worked,
And flower that zealous blew,
This audience of idleness
Disdained them, from the sky,

Till sundown crept, a steady tide,
And men that made the hay,
And afternoon, and butterfly,
Extinguished in its sea.

A Walk in the Woods: Seeds and Berries

As summer winds down, some plants and trees are setting seed, and broadcasting them in the always precarious bid for new life. My favorite berries in the woods now are the wacky looking White Baneberry, also known, very appropriately, as Doll's Eyes. Their shocking pink stems must catch the eye of any passing bird, and the pure white berries with their strong black dots look like so many goofy eyeballs dangling on the stems. Though edible for birds, the berries are poisonous to humans.




Blackberries thrive along wooded paths and make for a delicious snack when I walk by some canes. This year the dry weather in July and early August prevented a large juicy crop such as last years, when there was constant rain.




The high winds of tropical storm Irene brought down many small branches and gatherings of seeds from trees. I thought that this graceful spray of light bright green elongated pods was very beautiful.




The familiar maple seeds take me back to childhood, when we used to take them apart and stick them on our noses, a sprightly Pinocchio effect.




In one area of my walk are many small round seeds, the new ones green and older fading to a gray-brown. The little spheres look so perfect strewn about the ground, and a little mysterious because of that.




As though to instruct me in the many different types of seed containers, here I found some papery husks, pointed oval in shape, which when opened revealed a single pointed light brown seed.




Though they don't grow in the woods but in open spaces between, I wanted to include milkweed pods in this post because of their compellingly strange appearance. The oblong pods, narrowed at one end and decorated with ranks of raised points, gather together in athletic, dancing groups, bodies swaying and heads nodding. When mature, the pods will open to a burst of shiny silk, which will float the small seeds on air, scattering them to the winds.

A New Textile: "Red Bars"

Red Bars, hand dyed wool on linen; 4 pieces, each 6 x 6 inches.

My idea for this quartet came from a photo I took this summer for my painting; a thick bar alongside a curved hose:



I liked the idea of the wide flat form interacting with a narrow curve, so I did a few thumbnails. At first I thought of using strong colors similar to the ones in the photo, but then decided to be a little silly and go with pink as the background color. I chose to make the piece of multiple panels in order to have a rhythm move from one to the next: a flowing line, a staccato bounce of dark shapes. The color of the rectangles was a little difficult: Red Bars started out as Blue Bars, but after I hooked one panel I realized that blue didn't work at all; it look saccharine sweet. So I looked through my piles of dyed fabric remnants to find another color and the grayed red looked perfect to me.




Another decision was how to make the curving line: should it be a color, or something more subtle? I liked the idea of the line being less insistent, hardly there, so...




..what I did was hook the curved line and cut the tops of the loops, which gives the appearance of a line running through a field, like the path of a deer cutting through high grass.

Philip Guston, Untitled (Light Bulb), oil on panel, 12 x 14 inches. (1969-1973)

As I was working on this piece, I kept thinking of Philip Guston, whose paintings, both the abstract and the later great figurative works, included brilliant explorations of the impossible colors red and pink. Blood and flesh=life; and thumbing the nose at "good taste".

At the Shelburne Museum: Sculpted Animals

Imagine this "Formal Horse" atop your barn, trotting boldly into the wind. This 19th century weathervane is part of the large collection of folk sculpture at the Shelburne Museum which consists of shop signs and whirlagigs, weathervanes and decoys, and miniature circus and circus parade, in style from refined to bold. The lines of this horse are so sensitive, so expressive of the floating power of this beautiful animal. It has as much life in its form as the more realistic horses on the Parthenon friezes.




The maker of this early 19th century weathervane took more liberties with its design, making the rooster from a large, sweeping S curve. The way the thin head and neck swoop into the body and back up into the large tail is almost musical in its composition. This rooster once adorned the barn of the Old Fitch Tavern in Bedford, MA.




This fiercely comic – look at those teeth! – fish was probably a trade sign and is from mid-19th century New York. It is also a proudly patriotic fish. Repeated overlapping curved lines simply represent its scales, light moons bounded by hills.




Here is another fish sculpture, much smaller and for a different use. I remember that during my first visit to the museum years ago I fell most in love with the bird and fish decoys because they were so new to me. I had never seen decoys before, and this collection opened up a whole new world to me. I admired the shapes, the colors, the crafting of these objects.




Shore birds, generally shown standing high on a post, are my favorites of the bird decoys with their very simple shapes. This 19th century bird from New Jersey is crudely carved, but at the same time its curves are perfect, from the swelling belly to the pointed tail, and the neck narrowing to the spherical head adds a touch of geometry and of humor, extending into the line of the beak.




The shapes of large herons, crows on their woven wire legs, and goose heads make a lively group. The gestures of the birds are so fluid and natural, although pared down to essential forms. (I apologize for the poor photograph, but I thought this display case so beautiful, even with the reflections.)




These are contemporary carvings, so lovely in their graceful lines. The makers of these decoys are so clearly enamored of their subjects, and so knowledgeable. The hand shaped a small life, with simplicity and grandeur.




The final two pairs of animals come from a miniature circus parade made by Roy Arnold 1925-1955, with the help of some assistants. The entire extravagant parade, with animals and performers, cowboys and clowns, tableaus and wild animals, stretches over 500 feet at a scale of 1 inch to 1 foot. It is a marvel and a delight, and calls up memories of circuses from childhood, when the world was mysterious and magical.




This is the final post in a series from the Shelburne Museum. The three previous posts:
At the Shelburne Museum: Hand Tools and Machines
At the Shelburne Museum: Abstraction in the Decorative Arts
At the Shelburne Museum: Daily Life

After Irene

Tropical storm Irene arrived in Vermont yesterday with heavy rain and high, but not extraordinary, winds. I spent the day in the kitchen of my high and mostly dry house for comfort, making jam and zucchini bread and other goodies, while worrying about my family on the Jersey shore and my friends and family in NYC. Thank goodness the storm wasn't as terrible as feared. After thinking I'd dodged a bullet, my power went out at 5 PM and returned this morning at 10 AM, in time to save the summer produce packed into the freezer. The day was bright and breezy, so I put on my sneakers and went for a walk in the woods, thinking I might find damage there. All I found was this one young tree, its roots dislodged, leaning over the path.




The small stream running through the woods that had been dry for weeks is now singing as it runs over rocks and pebbles and the roots of trees.




Of course the mushrooms are happy with the additional water: almost 7 inches in my rain gauge. This gorgeous coral mushroom, about 3 inches high, has sprung from a fallen log.




The hard shiny red of a varnished mushroom glows like a piece of stained glass.




Tiny golden earth tongues brighten the damp leaf litter.




The colors of lichens, enriched by the rains, make a beautiful abstract pattern on a tree trunk, warm and cool greens and blacks (maybe of liverwort) interact with the cool browns of bark: a spreading landscape of imagined hills and fields.

After my walk, I felt relieved and happy, seeing the woods with renewed life. But then I drove down into town and what I saw at its western end, near the small river, was shocking.




The restaurant/general store had been at the center of a flood which upended the tarmac of its parking lot and filled its cellar. A large tank, empty, for diesel fuel was raised and floated by the river water and gas pumps ruined. A terrible tragedy for this small town business.




The yard of the town garage was was flooded and the culvert under its entranceway floated above ground. In addition to all the other work our intrepid town road crew – thank you Brent and Phillip! – has to do to repair roads, they also have to repair the garage.

Tragic weather events often feel so far away. As soon as my power returned this morning I spent some time looking at the dreadful damage in many small towns in Vermont, but nothing makes it more real than seeing your neighbors affected. This has made me realize that I rarely have enough empathy to truly feel the depth of loss of others; shock, yes, and sympathy, but more? I hope I've been taught a lesson with this flood. And I also have such respect for the emergency personnel, whether police or firefighters or electrical workers or road crews or health workers, who do such a fantastic job. Thank you all.

Evening Light

While waiting for Hurricane Irene to arrive with lashing wind and rain, I wanted to think back a few days to the calm rich glow of a late summer evening. At 7 PM the raking light of the sun flows golden over the garden, like a moment of creation.




The corn tassels are lit like branching chandeliers, fiery against the dark background of woods. The greens of leaves, warm in light and cool in shadow, point and bend in broad patterns contrasting with the linear texture of tassels.




The red of the poppies shifts towards orange in the waning light.




And looking at the young tomatoes, every tiny hair, every surface variation is caught by the low-angled light, allowing us to see the previously unnoticed.

A New Painting: "Tied"

Tied, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 6 x 7 inches.

Each spring I go out to farms to gather images for my paintings, and each year my eye – how I see what is in front of me, and what I notice – is a little different. It often surprises me when I realize that an image that so excited me the year before is there in front of me: there's the machine, there are the elements of the painting now finished in my studio, but the thrill is gone. I don't think this is because I've already turned the image into a painting so have moved on; I believe it's that my thinking shifts slightly each year, with new ideas guiding my choice of subjects. Tied pictures a farm implement that I painted before, in a different way. This year I was excited by the two strong simple orange bars, slightly curved, surrounded by black forms.




What made the image extra special to me was the flat strap tied around one of the bars. It adds tension, and hints at some emotion or narrative.

Orange Crossing, 2010, egg tempera on parchment, 6 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches.

Here is the earlier painting I did of this same farm implement. It's a painting I love, but as you can see, it is very different from the one I completed a couple of days ago, with more movement and energy in its curves and diagonals. For better or worse, I am moving towards greater simplicity.

From My Mother's Kitchen: Vegetarian Kibbeh Nayeh with Bulgar and Red Lentils

When I was growing up in my Syrian Jewish household, one of my favorite Saturday Maza (Middle Eastern meal of little dishes) dishes was Kibbeh Nayeh, a torpedo made up of bulgar wheat and raw chopped beef. In recent years people have grown wary of eating uncooked meat, so my mother gave me this recipe which uses cooked red lentils to bind the mixture. This kibbeh is a spicy, tasty finger food, which has always been a hit when I've taken it to potlucks. It's also easy to make. You have to use finely ground bulgar so it will absorb the other ingredients. I think a more coarsely ground bulgar can be used if it is soaked in cold water until it begins to soften a bit before mixing.

1 cup red lentils
3 cups water
2 cups fine bulgar wheat
4 onions, chopped
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 can tomato paste
1 Tbs salt
3 Tbs cumin
cayenne pepper to taste
I chopped green or red pepper (optional)

1. Cook the red lentils in the water until they get mushy.
2. Saute 2 of the chopped onions in the oil until golden.
3. Add the lentils and onions with oil to the bulgar. Add the tomato paste, salt, cumin and cayenne.
4. Mix everything together well and let stand for a while until the moisture is absorbed and the bulgar is tender. Add chopped onion (I used red onion for this batch), and finely chopped red or green pepper if desired.
   
5. With the hands, form into torpedo shapes about 3 inches long.

This recipe makes about 45 torpedoes. The photo above shows 1/2 of this recipe, 22 delicious pieces.

At the Shelburne Museum: Hand Tools and Machines

"Form ever follows function" wrote Louis Sullivan in 1896, and the phrase became a modernist credo. When looking at this display of early irons, with the elegance of their repeating curves, it seems clear to me that good designers of any period paid close attention to function and also took great care in the crafting of a beautiful object.




At the Shelburne Museum's Shaker Shed were a large collection of hand tools and household objects: rulers and planes, lamps, saws and stoves, utensils and wooden bowls, plates and dippers. Every piece seemed to have been made with an eye toward its use and also its form, which is why we still find these things so appealing: each is worth spending time with, noticing how one shape contrasts or flows into another, how some are severe, some humorous.




Not all of the tools at the museum had the severe simplicity of the hand tools above. This scale at the General Store is embellished with curves and curlicues – a no-no in modernism – that make this workaday instrument into something more lighthearted. It certainly would be fun to see a design like this at my local supermarket.




A much more serious tool was in a case along with other medical equipment. While I was photographing this, a young boy came along and with great surprise said "I didn't know they actually had these!" For those of us brought up on Captain Hook, false limbs like this hook or a pegleg, seems only the stuff of fantasy.




In the Print Shop were many old presses, like this Cottrell Flatbed Cylinder Press from 1871. It was in use until 1971 at a small newspaper in Hardwick, Vermont. I love the repeating circular brass forms, which I'm sure also had their function.




Less beautiful, but so interesting, is this linotype machine, a Mergenthaler Linotype, Model 8, made in 1914. This modest machine revolutionized the printing industry, eliminating the need for typesetting.




The last two images come from the engine deck of the Ticonderoga, a paddlewheel steamship built in 1906 and moved to the museum in 1955 from Lake Champlain. It was dark and mysterious down there, not least of all because I didn't understand what the dials and pumps and holes and rivets and beams were for. But they were marvelous, the curves of the gauges above like surprised faces, like Munch's The Scream actually.




This was a gorgeous space which reminded me of looking into a Anish Kapoor or Richard Serra sculpture. The combination of straight and angled walls, topped with a curve, the projecting rivets and sunken holes, the dramatic light, make a atrong statement that transforms a working structure into something close to art.


Previous blog posts from the Shelburne Museum:
At the Shelburne Museum: Abstraction in the Decorative Arts
At the Shelburne Museum: Daily Life