The Artist and the Cookbook

I told this story to a few friends who said I should have posted it when it happened, that you would have liked the story about the synchronicity that sent The Spit  to Austria.  Better late than never?

In early 2019, Galerie Centrum in Graz, Austria found us.  This is how.

Going way back to what seemed like minutes after WWII, my newly married mother was leaving Austria. As a parting gift, her mother gave her a beautifully bound and illustrated cookbook by Katharina Prato.  To understand the importance of this book, think Austria’s Julia Child (a hundred years before Julia) meets Irma Rombauer (The Joy of Cooking).  Besides its significance as a kind of cooking Bible, the cookbook was given to her the last time my mother would ever see her mother.  So, now you have an idea of how devastated my mother was when the shipping crate that carried our belongings was looted while travelling by rail from Quebec City harbour to White River Ontario.  She often mentioned that cookbook over the years, mourned its loss and the connection it had carried.

 Many years later, I found a copy of the cookbook, (right publishing date, but not nearly as beautiful and illustration rich as the original) through an online Austrian antique bookseller.  I had the book restored and a case made for it and then presented it to my mother. Eventually she had to transfer to a nursing home.  What to do with that Prato cookbook?  Recycle bin was NOT an option.

The first return on a Google search was a culinary competition in Graz, Austria named for Katharina Prato.  A sign, yes? Graz is the culinary capital of Austria -- perfect home for the book.  I had forgotten to delete my automatic signature with link to this blog, before sending my email inquiry.  It turned out that the lead organizer of the event was a curious person and became enchanted with our Leslie Street Spit.  He also happened to be a close friend of the curator at Galerie Centrum, who in turn was a curious person and became enchanted with our Leslie Street Spit.  The exhibition opened December 26, 2019.

A few exhibition images:

Until next time. Stay safe and be careful out there.

The Stealth Art Collective

Spit-love and Wild Art

 

Our Spit-Love story’s anniversary is today, ten years today. A good day to begin telling our story, yes? And I am delighted to be the one in our small collective of artists to tell it.

I’ve noticed during our time together ― The Spit and mine ― that most visitors, especially the camera bearing ones are interested in this urban wilderness for its wild life, the conservation efforts. Visitors without cameras might be carrying fishing equipment if you are out early enough to catch them, or they are earbuds wearing walkers and joggers.  Oh, and the cyclists. 

The results of a Google search confirm this.  Compared to recreational and wild life interests, there is relatively little to be found about wild art, about the creative instinct and its dance with us on The Spit.  This has pride of place on the Stealth Art Collective’s list of what we love and what excites us about The Spit.

In the beginning using photo documentation, our purpose was to track the creative instinct as it reveals itself in the spontaneous, anonymously made artworks to be found there.  We’ve not been to another place where you can get this close to a clear uncompromised view of the creative instinct at work. 

In this wild, messy urban location, there is absolutely no incentive to make art: no curator, no art enthusiast to please, no critic interested, no formal institutionalized setting for display. Certainly, no prestige. Urban-world ideas of what is precious and valuable and conventional definitions of what is art  are impossible to apply. And, except for once in 2014 ―  that’s a story for another time ― there are no financial rewards, and yet…

I had experienced The Spit for years before 2008 but on April 14 I saw it differently. At the furthest point, below the lighthouse I saw this:

I felt a shift in perception. It was one of those rare experiences when the universe seems to open her curtain just a little to reveal something important, enlightening, some truth. 

And so it was the first day of the next ten years. 

Immediately we made a rule of conduct.  If we were tracking the creative instinct, then we could not intervene, we would only document what we found.  And just as immediately, we broke our rule. Not our fault. The creative instinct coaxed us to play.

There was something irresistible about crowning it with a stone spine. Perhaps it was for us a way of marking the beginning of something significant.  You never know when something is beginning until hindsight kicks in. We’ll return to this fine rebar creature in its many incarnations later in the story.

Until next time. 

The Stealth Art Collective

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