Twenty-plus years of documenting the South's vernacular art, visionary environments and traditions….plus modern art exhibits, Faulkner and Eudora, and This Week's Various. Welcome.
Hugo, Oklahoma calls itself ‘Circus City’ — it’s been home to the Kelly Miller Circus since 1938 — they’re still touring. The city is also home to the second-largest Asian elephant population in North America, the Endangered Ark Foundation, also started by the Miller family.
This is from a visit we made last year.
These markers delineate their section, Showmen’s Rest, of Mount Olivet cemetery:
Give life the best that’s in you for it’s only a one night stand. There are no repeat performances brought back by popular demand.: //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Staying at the 21c Hotel in Bentonville was a *fabulous* idea. There are four of them now and I’ve been looking forward to staying at a 21c since the Louisville one opened in 2006. They’ve been named ‘Top 10 Hotels in the World’ by Conde Nast, and the aspect of hotel + museum was the perfect mix.
The penguins that they’re known for are everywhere in the hotel, and the boys were encouraged to move them around.
As founder Steve Wilson put it, ‘We design the facility for art, not use art as decoration.’ Yesssss.
And that’s really it. The rooms aren’t even the thing, really. It’s the museum that you’re sleeping inside. Images from that later this week. And it is wonderful.
— The gorgeous Broad Museum in LA: opening this week and YES a million times to the inaugural exhibition:
Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, a mirror-lined chamber housing a dazzling and seemingly endless LED light display, will be featured in the inaugural installation. This experiential artwork on the museum’s first floor has limited capacity, accommodating one visitor at a time for approximately 45 seconds, and will require a separate free timed ticket, which general admission ticket holders will be able to reserve after arrival at the museum.
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Ben and Jerry’s official Texas state flavor: Bourbon Pecan Pie (barbecue peach lost).
— So this is what the Olive and Sinclair Seersucker chocolates look like — and they’re ready to ship.
— James Boyce, who owns Commerce Kitchen, Cotton Row, and Pane e Vino Pizzeria in Huntsville and Galley and Garden in Birmingham (I’ve been to all but his pizzeria now) is one of 135 chefs around the country taking part in a Thomas Bagels competition…he came up with a breakfast barbecue bagel. Have to say, it’s not easy to get too excited about Thomas brand. But then I looked at the other chefs, and Shelley Cooper of Terra Mae in Chattanooga, Martha Wiggins of Sylvain in NOLA, and several other really great chefs are participating.
I ordered the grilled Norwegian salmon with herbed Israeli couscous, green beans, and lemon-dill yogurt. At one point, the waiter asked if they could substitute another fish and I agreed. Twenty seconds later, they came out with my and my friend’s dishes (if I had said no, I imagine they would have had to re-fire both dishes — why not ask me before cooking it? The difference between cod and grouper is one thing, but the difference between the salmon I ordered and this snapper is something else altogether. I’m okay with most any fish, but some people can be crazy-picky about it.). And the plate came out an ugly, sloppy mess: //embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
above: the Blue Dog roadkill sidewalk stencil I found in New Orleans
In Things That Aren’t Fair news, the Great British Bake Off is showing in England right now. #Spoileralert: somebody explains how they pick up roadkill. They go on to make a pie.
..missing the epic meringue at the Twix-n-Tween (closed in the past year) in Centreville, Alabama
Anyway, there’s a restaurant in Calgary named Pie Cloud that has gorgeous meringue and the staff wear tees that read: I’ve got 3.14 problems but Pie ain’t one In Mobile last week, I saw that Bienville Books had a tee in the window that read: I read dead people. — Someone is selling what they call Chicago-style barbecue in Shreveport and explains: “When I say Chicago style, it’s rapid. It’s been done fast, very quick. This is not slow cooking. I can take a completely raw brisket and have it done in an hour and a half. It will be falling apart and so tender you can cut it with a plastic spoon”
At least since the early 1980s, Crosby’s has catalogued the itemized receipts of Jewish women who drag out their grinders in preparation for Passover Seders or meals served at either end of the High Holy Days, which started on Monday with Rosh Hashanah and end next Wednesday with Yom Kippur. The store’s stack of paperwork represents a unique, usable archive of Lowcountry Jewish cooking. “I’m in there, absolutely,” says Cindi Solomon of Sullivan’s Island. “I call and ask to have the same fish he gave Joan Berlinsky. It’s just a cool feeling to be part of it: It’s bigger than a cookbook.”
A couple of Toronto restaurateurs insist they had never heard of Frito pie when they invented a version with Doritos instead. When asked by the Toronto Star why that choice of chip, they say that the Fritos are so ‘American’ and that Doritos are more Canadian.
Also: Aaron Franklin rocked a prime cuts of unicorn tee (maybe this one?) on his show. Which…if you aren’t Tivoing BBQ with Franklin, you’re watching the wrong shows.
above: from Rosh Hashanah this year — it’s tradition to eat a ‘new’ fruit…one that’s in season but we haven’t yet had since it became available — so I served (top right) starfruit. For the fish, I made little cornbread versions with my Lodge cast iron mold. And over on the left, a birthday cake as the world celebrates 5776. Black and whites, too!
Next year, I’ll try harder to find a Pawpaw fruit as they are in season beginning in August.
Meat and three lunch this week: from Sarris on 31st street in Birmingham, in a heavily industrial section of town. I was really only in the mood for vegetables, so I got a 2-veg plate, with northern beans and green beans and roll. Very good. — And the sweetest Kiss Cam ever happened this week at a Braves game:
Asher Brown Durand: Kindred Spirits (the painting was sold by the New York Public Library by auction in 2005 to Alice Walton for a record-setting $35MM — which set a record at the time for a painting by an American artist)
So not only was the museum impressive — the architecture, the collection — the WalMart Foundation makes it so that general admission is free (I have membership at Crystal Bridges, but still, very nice). It’s so easy for people to be dismissive of the museum…I’ve read critiques that the collection doesn’t push the audience, or Alice Walton is rich and doesn’t have great taste, how new acquisitions are kept secret (sigh), the list goes on… or when that isn’t enough, attack (gah, I like Glasstire, but) even the region. Or — a curator left as he described NWA as ‘the Afghanistan of curatorial posts.’ Is that kind of attitude really going to earn one sympathetic laughs or high-fives in galleries back East? Weak.
This is just a terrible sort of unimaginative, tedious snobbery. Elitists are boring.
Meanwhile, Crystal Bridges opened in November 2011 and this week celebrates its two millionth visitor.
— I missed ‘State of the Art’ but one of the great pieces included: Jonathan Schipper’s ‘Slow Room’
…and what to be excited about next? Their opening of the Bachman-Wilson Frank Lloyd Wright home.
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