In need of winter squash inspiration.

I have avoided writing about life on the farm for a few months, in part because I worry that the "I grew some vegetables" and the "yet another animal died" stories get redundant and dull.  We suffered a particularly difficult loss of our beloved 7-year-old cat in early November and, as a result, we rehomed our youngest, most problematic, dog.  It was all horrible and traumatic, but we have moved on.  We now have two very well-behaved dogs, a lovely 8-month-old cat, and two adorable, rescued kittens.  Life seems to be back in balance.

Our five chickens have been molting since October, so no eggs.  Hopefully, they will begin again in January.

But, tonight, I'm thinking about winter squash.  Since I've known Mike, he has had a passion for pumpkins.  We rented a house from friends when we were first married, and he pushed hard to develop a pumpkin patch on the lot.  When we moved out to our property, he made sure to allot a section of the garden to pumpkins.  Over the years, we have become more interested in preserving heirloom varieties, so we now grow all sorts of unusual vegetables, including winter squash.

I can never remember the names of them all, but we grow Marina DiChioggia and Hubbard and Red Bumpy Things.  We harvest and store these, and they comprise a large portion of our winter food supply.

However, I'm just not great at cooking these things and, furthermore, Mike doesn't even really care for the flavor of squash!  I've done pumpkin soup, pumpkin risotto, pumpkin gnocchi, pumpkin cookies and breads, but I usually just puree it up with butter and maple syrup.  Anouk refuses to eat any of it, as the texture makes her gag.  I was just online yet again, searching for good, easy pumpkin recipes, to no avail.  I'm not interested in super-complicated gourmet recipes, or those involving bacon or sausage.  I'd like to be able to concoct something with what I have on hand and create some simple dishes, but with different spices or ingredients.  If there's a simple, savory squash recipe, I have yet to find it.

A friend recently served a veggie lasagne with winter squash as one ingredient, and it was delicious, so I would like to try that myself.  If anyone out there has good ideas for new ways to spice up squash, or even hide it in other dishes, please send them to me.  I'll give them a whirl and post the results.

In the meantime, Happy Solstice to All, and to All a Good Night!

Honing

My newest Elaine Goodman book arrived last week, The Human Form in Mosaic.  I have not read the book carefully yet, but I've been noting different techniques she demonstrates for depicting figures and portraits, while scanning the text.  Between the recent trip to Turkey and this book, I was inspired to take a break from the Rapunzel series to just practice.  I used some small scraps of wedi given to me by my tile-setter friend, Frank Lynam.

For the first, I found a photo in a 1970 National Geographic I happen to have of a Tibetan refugee.  I did a very simplified sketch of her face and proceeded to fill in the spaces with my stained glass scraps.  This is a very different style than my usual faces, less stylized, more emotional.  I usually create faces that express a certain contentment, peace, and joy.  This face expresses pain and loss.  My goal was to do my first portrait based on a photograph, and to see if I could create contours without andamento.  I'm pretty happy with it as a first attempt, but disappointed in myself for the inadvertent extended groutlines, particularly the one slashing her left cheek like a giant wound. 

Next, I designed a face from imagination, more true to my usual style.  Again, there is one particularly offensive groutline that seemed like a good idea at the time; that curved shape that runs from under her eye to the hairline.  I don't know what I was thinking, but sometimes these mistakes become glaringly clear once the piece is grouted.  Also, I wanted to add detail in the iris by cutting tiny little pieces of glass as rays from the pupil.  It makes her look like a zombie instead.  It might have worked in an ungrouted mosaic, but not here.  I am tempted to paint the groutlines there to solidify the iris.


I am finding Elaine Goodman's book very helpful, but I feel that a hands-on workshop is really necessary.  I hope to invest in one sometime this year.  In the meantime, I'll actually read this book and keep practicing.  I'm registered for a mural workshop with Josef Norris at IMA in February and I plan to begin facilitating community mosaic this Spring. 

Rapunzel, Rapunzel

Here is a terrible photo of my first Rapunzel mosaic.  While designing a concrete sculpture back in September, I had an image of an exhibit featuring multiples of this image, done in different materials, colors and styles.  I decided this would be a fun way to practice various techniques while drawing on one character from fairy tale lore.

I've always been captivated by fairy tales.  I had a very thick collection of Grimms Fairy Tales as a child that I read over and over, and I now read them to my daughter.  I think I re-read Rapunzel so many times because I found it so frustrating that Rapunzel wouldn't just cut off her long hair and use it as a rope to climb out of the tower.  Or that the prince wouldn't simply bring a ladder or rope right away.  What was the point of dragging out the process?  Meanwhile, I wasn't allowed to cut my hair as a girl, so it grew down to my butt, always full of nasty tangles.  My mom was known for her long, blonde hair, and she still refuses to cut it to a more manageable length.

I used this Rapunzel as an experiment with using small square tesserae to create facial contours.  This piece is quite small for me (I prefer wall-sized projects), and it was a challenge for me to cut each  little salvaged stained glass scrap into squares.  I quickly began to feel impatient with it, but it was a good exercise for me.  I think it is important, at this point, to go back and learn the foundations of mosaic technique, in depth.  While I worked on this piece, I waited for the arrival of my newest mosaic book, The Human Form in Mosaic by Elaine M. Goodwin.  I'm looking forward to practicing with some new methods, nicely outlined in the book.  Hopefully, within 6 months to a year, I'll find a gallery space and have a real art show with Rapunzel as the central theme.

By the way, my choice of themes is in no way related to the Disney movie that must have just been released.  Pure coincidence.

Mosaic artist returns from Turkey with tail between legs.

We returned from Turkey one week ago, and I still feel disoriented.  The jet-lag was made more difficult by my 7-year-old who spent the first several days home on opposite-time, so the transition back to our regular schedule has been very hard.  It has been a struggle for me to get back to work in the studio after an entire month off, and while I expected to come home full of ideas and creative energy, instead I feel completely stumped.

I am a self-taught mosaic artist, having taken only one workshop, though I've read a lot of mosaic books and I spent the past 10 years working hard to learn the technical aspects of the medium.  One area I have not really covered, mainly for lack of interest, is classical mosaic.  When I planned the Turkey trip, I felt it would be a good opportunity to force myself to learn about the history of my craft, and to appreciate those early styles.

During a tour in Cappadocia, we had a very knowledgeable Turkish guide who led us through a Hittite-era underground city, a Byzantine Cathedral carved in rock, and a beautiful canyon lined with signs of early civilization.  He was able to talk about geological, cultural and religious history in detail, without notes.  Though from a Muslim background, he explained more about the Bible and Christianity than most American Christians have learned in a lifetime, with respect and fairness.  When he learned that I am a mosaic artist, he asked, "So, which do you prefer; Greek or Byzantine mosaic style?"  Feeling supremely ignorant, I just said that my style is contemporary, and I was there to learn more about the classic styles.  Honestly, I didn't know the difference.  Did I mention that I've been a professional mosaic artist for 10 years?  He quickly lost interest in me at that point.

Throughout the second week of the trip, we visited many more sites featuring examples of Byzantine mosaic, and I was utterly impressed.  The level of skill was amazing, and nothing compares to seeing it in person.  Mosaic artists know this: you see a mosaic in print, but when you see the real thing, it is a different experience, often unexpected.  I started out cutting my tesserae into little squares and placing them in rows to fill spaces, but later began to abandon that method, preferring a more free-flow approach that makes better use of my salvaged materials.  But the work I saw in the Sultanahmet Mosaic Museum and Kariye Church was so stunning and made such a strong impression on me, I feel compelled to learn to use my andamento more effectively.

There's a bit of a struggle in my brain right now between the part of me that wants to stick with the style I know and enjoy, and the part that wants to challenge myself to learn another way, and to become more versatile.  I have a project on the table now, the first in a series of Rapunzel mosaics, that is an attempt to bring some of that classic style into my contemporary work.  It is more time consuming, and I hate working with such tiny pieces, but I think it is good practice. We'll see where it takes me.

Not Constantinople...

Close to 20 years ago, when I was tracing the origins of religion in college, I wanted to go to Anatolia to visit archeological sites.  But I never went.  Then, when I was a member of Raqs Halim Middle Eastern dance troupe, performing with a live band to predominately Turkish music, I mingled with many people from Turkey and talked about saving for a trip to the region.  But I didn't.  Now, as a mosaic artist, I have even more reason to visit Turkey. The place is full of ancient mosaics, intricate tiles and incredible architecture.  Istanbul is enjoying great success, with a thriving arts community, and there are many prominent mosaic artists living and working there.

In March, at the Society of American Mosaic Artists conference in Chicago, I happened to sit at a table with one other person.  He introduced himself as Suha Semerci from Istanbul, and we muddled through polite conversation in very simple words because he was just learning English.  During the rest of the conference, we touched bases occasionally, and we have kept in touch by email and facebook over the past 6 months.

Mike and I have planned a trip to Istanbul, in detail, in the past, but we never saved enough money to go.  We finally scraped together a small chunk, along with two no-interest credit card offers, and we are going for it.  I was very excited to have a personal contact in Istanbul, and Suha has been very generous about offering suggestions and looking for information to help us plan.  But more connections keep developing, and it looks like I will have a busy social calendar while I'm there.  At every turn, something else falls into place, and it promises to be a very rich experience.

Here's Suha at work.

When I get back, I'll definitely post some of the highlights of the trip.  We will visit beautiful mosques, take a ferry down the Bosphorus, see the mosaic museum, have tea with colleagues, meet many new friends, and ride camels in Goreme.

We'll stay in a cave hotel in Cappadocia, among the "fairy chimneys."

We leave on the 15th of October, and will be there for two weeks.  As you can imagine, we are getting very excited!  I feel like this trip is a culmination of many interests, and it is sure to be very inspirational.

Stealth Raccoon.

As you may know, your standard Thanksgiving turkey is a genetic mutation, developed to produce the most food for the least money and effort.  The resulting creature cannot carry its own weight after a year and is unable to reproduce naturally, in addition to being flavorless and shot full of hormones and antibiotics. Heritage breed turkeys are making a little bit of a comeback, and we have jumped on that bandwagon for the past few years. 

Each year, we order turkey chicks from several states away, and they are shipped to us in a box through the U.S. postal system (which seems none too happy with the arrangement.)  There are always a couple of dead or dying chicks in the box, and we usually lose a few more before they stabilize in a warm spot in our bathroom.

My goal has been to get them to breed, and eventually eliminate the need to order and ship live baby animals, because it just seems so ridiculous.  They are expensive, too, at about $15 per chick.  However, they no longer possess their natural instincts.  Males often can't figure out what to do with their hormones, females think I am their mate, and eggs get dropped randomly in the yard, left to quickly grow cold.

This year, I managed to get one still-warm egg under a broody hen, who successfully hatched and raised it.  It was a female, and I had high hopes that she might have some inherent maternal instincts, and my plan would finally begin to work.  But, just now, when I opened the coop to let the flock out for the day, I found a bloody, headless body on the floor.  At first, there was no sign of a break-in, but I finally found a spot near the roof where the chicken-wire had been pried apart.  I am grateful that only one of our 6 turkeys was killed, but it appears to be my baby.  My one hope.

Butchering will take place sometime this week, by my good, efficient friends at Barnyard Gardens.  I'm taking the whole bunch in, and will start again in the spring.  I can't imagine the amount of work and investment involved in a real business raising and selling free-range, organic, heritage turkeys, but I am certain that those doing it deserve every penny of the steep price.

Harvest time again!

Last year by this time, I was harvesting and storing as fast as I could go, listening to "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" on cd to keep motivated, and delivering bags of fresh produce to the local food bank every week.  But, if you read my spring posts, you know we had delays and frustration, and the weather was very cold during early summer.  So, we are definitely eating lots of yummy fresh food these days, but not giving much away. 

Here's part of the veggie garden, looking toward the pumpkin patch.  You can see that we harvested and tilled two of the raised beds, and the last one was just planted with winter broccoli.

The bees have been working all over our garden, but the honey super is empty.  We removed the queen excluder, hoping they would start building some comb on those frames, but it seems like we might not get honey this year.

If you look carefully at this shot, you can see that our tomato plants are laden with beautful GREEN tomatoes.  If they do finally turn red, it will likely happen all at once, so I'll be trying to find ways to use and store all of them.  My fear is that they will just begin to go bad, without ever ripening.  Everyone I know has had the same tomato trouble this year, blaming it on the cool early summer temps.

One new thing we did this year was to hand-pollinate our cucumbers and squashes.  Anouk learned to do it very well, so she helps to keep on top of it.  I feel like I have a much more intimate relationship with my vegetables.  It's interesting to see the female flowers open, waiting eagerly for some action, then to look for the male flowers, with their very male anatomy, and to intervene on their behalf.  Sometimes a plant will have a ton of females, with no males in sight, and other times it's the opposite.  And it is always sad to see the withered fruit of a female that was never pollinated; a loss of potential food.  Since we started hand-pollinating, we have so many more cucumbers, it's amazing!  And they are absolutely delicious.

I thought I would end with a photo of one of our Romanesco Cauliflowers, because this has to be my favorite thing growing in the garden right now.  Isn't it fantastic?