Month: April 2016

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Peche, And Serious About Pastry

Right about now is when soft shell crab season usually begins, and Garden and Gun has a recipe for Tempura Soft-Shell Crabs with Pickled Pepper Mayonnaise and Tomato-Cucumber Salad from chef Ryan Prewitt of Peche.

Peche won the James Beard Award for ‘Best New Restaurant’ and Ryan Prewitt won Best New Chef: South last year.

Peche New Orleans//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

If I time things perfectly on a ‘museum day’, I can take in the Ogden, the WWII, and the CAC. Peche is only…maybe three blocks from the WWII museum, so on this particular day, I did the WWII Museum, had lunch, then went over to the Ogden. Rather than something really filling, I just ordered from the raw bar this little seafood salad

Peche New Orleans//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

I’m not going to judge a restaurant by a tiny dish such as this, but whereas it could have been fresh and fun, it was overdressed and blah. On the menu, the small plates are more interesting than anything else and next time I’ll try something completely different.

As far as Link restaurants, Cochon is our favorite (though Butcher is good for something quick, and Herbsaint is nice).  I noticed just now that his ownership of La Boulangerie is not listed on the website.

Av met Donald Link in 2013 when Andrew Zimmern came to town and they had a cookout at John Michael Bodnar’s farm (he’s Fresh Hospitality: Jim ‘N Nicks, Taziki’s, Martin’s BBQ, etc)

Andrew Zimmern’s team filming for the show
Bizarre Foods Shoot//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Donald getting his mic on
Bizarre Foods Shoot//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Bizarre Foods Shoot//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

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The T-P had this article about Link’s takeover of La Boulangerie: How Donald Link Ticked Off Uptown New Orleans by Buying a Bakery

“I have seen threads on Nextdoor.com about murders, zoning changes, The Advocate’s damned red bags,” wrote Julie Graybill, secretary of the Faubourg Marengo Neighbohood Association, in an email. “But nothing has triggered the passion and outrage of NOLA citizens as much as the changing of the menu items at La Boulangerie.”

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I’m partial to the croissants at Hi-Do Bakery in Terrytown. Just noticed that the T-P did a feature on them — From Vietnam to New Orleans: Hi Do Bakery in Terrytown a Refugee’s Success Story

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

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Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic at the Ogden

Last summer, I was lucky enough to see the Jim Roche: Cultural Mechanic exhibit at the Ogden. Jim Roche retired as Professor of Art at Florida State in 2011. His works have been included at the Whitney, the Venice Biennale, and Paris Biennale, and has been reviewed by Art Forum, Time, the NYT, and The New Yorker.

This is his ‘Loch Ness Mama Playing’
Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Via Daily Serving: “The Lochness was something I had thought about for a long time. I guess I saw myself as this creature that no one new about. But I knew I existed.”

Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

His Dr. Curve motorcycle legend cartography:
Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

This series was described as “inspired equally by W.C. Rice’s Cross Garden (a self-taught environment in Prattville, Alabama), the vernacular cross memorials found throughout the back roads of the South, and what Roche describes as “those fire-and-brimstone preachers on the low-watt radio stations.”
Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

I have a set of images from several visits to W.C. Rice’s Cross Garden here on Flickr.

Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

In this same vein, Jim Roche actually had a part in Silence of the Lambs — he was the televangelist broadcasting on the television outside Hannibal Lecter’s cell. The full performance is here:

Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden

Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

From his series, ‘Some Americans Feel Like This’:
Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Jim Roche : Cultural Mechanic Exhibit at the Ogden//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Gambit has it:
There’s a distinctly ad hoc, gonzo, radical outsider vibe going on in this big retrospective going back to the 1960s, an era that permeates much of his oeuvre.

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Most looking forward to at the Ogden: the Maude Schuyler Clay exhibit that opens October 1, 2016.

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El Anatsui’s Metal Cloth at the High, Last Days to See Green Pastures Dial Exhibit

El Anatsui’s ‘Taago’ 2006 made of aluminum and copper wire, at the High in Atlanta:

El Anatsui is Ghanaian, and based in Nigeria. He makes these metal cloth sculptures by joining the aluminum bits that are discarded from the necks and tops of liquor bottles (from the museum label:) ‘to form a glittering textile in the tradition of the strip-woven cloth made by men in West Africa for more than one thousand years. Anatsui describes how, for him, the dynamic, fluid forms of these works suggest a universal yearning for liberty and freedom.’

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Thornton Dial's 'Old Projects' 1994 at the High in Atlanta//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Above, Dial’s ‘Old Projects’ at the High

The High’s Green Pastures: In Memory of Thornton Dial, Sr. is finishing next week as it runs through May 1.

From the High’s exhibit description:

“Art is like a bright star up ahead in the darkness of the world…. [It] is a guide for every person who is looking for something. That’s how I can describe myself: Mr. Dial is a man looking for something.”
—Thornton Dial

When the internationally renowned Alabama artist Thornton Dial, Sr., passed away at the age of eighty-seven in late January, he left behind a body of work that has transformed American art. Despite his lack of formal training, Dial took the art world by storm with his deft fusion of painting and sculpture, leading one art critic to declare that his work marked the end of so-called “outsider” art when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial in 2000. The courageous manner in which Dial confronts oppression and records perseverance inspired the title of his critically acclaimed retrospective Hard Truths: The Art of Thornton Dial, which the High exhibited in 2013.

The High’s memorial exhibition, on view February 13 to May 1, 2016, presents a selection of Dial’s exuberant drawings and symbolically rich paintings that the Museum has collected over the past twenty years. Today, Dial is represented in museum collections across the country, including those of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

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Fannie Lou Hamer

We drove down to Ruleville, Mississippi to see the Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden with the statue they dedicated in 2012:

Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden, Ruleville MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Fannie Lou Hamer Voting and Civil Rights Pioneer
1962 – Joined the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and became a field secretary
1963 – Severely beaten while in Winona, Mississippi when she and other civil rights workers were returning from a SCLC Citizenship Training Conference
Became one of first black persons to register to vote in Sunflower county
Ran for Congress in the Second Congressional District
1964 – Founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) and led the MFDP challenge before the National Democratic Party Credentials Committee in Atlantic City, New Jersey
1968 – Founder of the Freedom Farms Corporation (FFC)
1970 – Founder of the Fannie Lou Hamer Day Care Center, Ruleville, MS
1971 – Became a member of the Policy Council of the National Council of Negro Women, Inc. and a member of the Women’s Political Caucas 
1974 – She was named to the Board of Trustees of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change

This sign was placed in 2011 during the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders:

 In 1962 at age 44, Hamer tried to register to vote; the next day she was fired from her job on the plantation east of here. She became a civil rights activist, opening her Ruleville home to Freedom Summer workers and other activists. She earned a reputation as an electrifying speaker, especially as a delegate of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. She fought racism, injustice, and poverty until her death in 1977.

Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden, Ruleville MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

“I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden, Ruleville MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden, Ruleville MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden, Ruleville MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Fannie Lou Hamer Memorial Garden, Ruleville MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

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Fannie Lou Hamer Museum (I think we were there when they weren’t open)
Fannie Lou Hamer Museum, Ruleville MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Fannie Lou Hamer U.S. Post Office
Fannie Lou Hamer Post Office, Ruleville MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

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Transcript of her testimony here.

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The Blue And White House, Clarksdale

The blue and white house in Clarksdale, Mississippi

The Blue and White House, Clarksdale MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

The mailbox has a ‘Love Gd’ message
The Blue and White House, Clarksdale MS//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

These pics we took in 2011 show the front of the home better
Blue House In Clarksdale//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Blue House In Clarksdale//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Including the driveway, which reads:
Mad About Gd
Treat Everbidy Right
Falling in love with Jesus
Blue House In Clarksdale//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

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Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art

While we stayed at the Peabody in Memphis, we walked over to the Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art at Peabody Place.

Qing Dynasty ivory horses
Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art, Memphis//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art, Memphis//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Ivory and bone Qing Dynasty dragon with pearl boat
Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art, Memphis//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

The Belz has the largest collection (over 900 objects) of Asian art has the largest and most comprehensive collection of Chinese art in the South.

Here, the Judaic section, with the largest collection of Daniel Kafri pieces outside Israel.
Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art, Memphis//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art, Memphis

The Lox and Grits: The Jewish Communities of Memphis and the Mid-South exhibit is now housed here as well.
Belz Museum of Asian and Judaic Art, Memphis//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

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