​Recently David and I get lucky. For our call Sophie’s in the real kitchen and busy helping her mother. Together they’re preparing the family’s evening meal. Though our darling has her back turned to us and the camera, over her shoulder she explains (without being asked), “I’m doing ‘mise en place’ (MEEZ ahn plahs), like I learned in cooking class.”

“Mise en place” is the French term for “setting everything in place”—pots, pans, utensils, ingredients, et cetera. This is the technique used by a skilled chef when placing in order and at-the-ready all that is required to assemble a meal quickly and effortlessly. 

Tonight the menu is pasta and sauce and salad and bread. Sophie’s just finished organizing everything they’ll need for their preparations. Spoon in hand, she’s ready to start on the sauce as soon as her “sous chef” mom finishes chopping the tomatoes and onions. We can smell the aromas about to happen all the way down here in Missouri!

Or are those tantalizing scents coming from Josie Mai’s house across the park here in Carthage? If we text Josie and ask “What’s cookin’?” I’m sure we’ll hear she’s in the kitchen with Lance, their three doggies—Gertie, Maya, and Kiowa—underfoot, creating something beautiful to behold and savor. That’s just what Josie does! She cooks…and she knows things…a lot!...about  making art of the food she puts together!

Come and see for yourself! Josie’s amazing solo artist exhibition, “EAT ART: Hand-Rubbed Collage”, opens at Hyde House on Friday, April 6, 2018, 6:00-8:00 p.m. Admission is free. Her stunning culinary-inspired creations will remain très “mise en place” just waiting for your visit during weekend gallery hours through May 20: Friday and Saturdays, noon to 5:00 p.m. and Sundays, 1:00-5:00 p.m., or by appointment at (417) 358-4404.

In Josie’s words, “Food is loaded with design components. Color, texture, endless shapes and forms create a composition on a plate or platter. And bonus! This is art we all can eat and share. I am truly obsessed. Maybe for the first time ever. Planning, researching, buying ingredients, laying it all out “mise en place”, prepping ingredients, assembling, tasting, seasoning, cooking, waiting and then eating, usually with a loved one.

EAT ART is comprised of three series. First, collages of “food” on a “plate”. The collage material is from National Geographic magazine. Pieces are hand torn and cut with an x-acto knife. Paper and adhesive are applied with fingertips and palm, resulting in a technique I call hand-rubbed. The colors and textures from all over the globe remind me of travel, adventure and cuisines from around the world.

The second series are prints from my sketchbooks. I take the books when I travel, as well as work on them at home. They are quick, direct and feel less precious in a good way. They catch my thoughts and reflect my process. Most of the images and photos are from Bon Appetit and Food and Wine magazines. You’ll see menus, notes and layers of food and art ideas. I think it’s important to show these sketches and even consider them as finished pieces. 

A third series are text drawings: dark, buttery ebony pencil on Bristol board. The quotes are almost gospel, from the mouths of innovative chefs who have quite a following. Like any discipline, when the heroes of the field say something, you write it down and treat it as sacred. Most of these quotes have a direct parallel to visual art, and it’s fun to view food as a legit art form; again, one we get to devour.

The thing that excites me most about food as art is that the possibilities are endless. I know I will never learn everything about every dish, and that even if I make the same recipe ten times it will be different each time, depending on my mood, the season, the ingredients and with whom I share the meal. And heck! We all have to eat. A few times every day. Why not make it art? And make it delicious!”

You’ll agree, when you visit EAT ART—a very fine artistic meal—everything exquisitely “mise en place”!

Mark your calendars now for this spectacular treat and plan to spend your evening at artCentral’s luscious EAT ART feast! My husband, David, and I will be there for sure. Friday’s our date night, and we can’t think of a better way to celebrate than with great art, good food and a house full of art enthusiasts. Come join us to savor the culinary delight of Josie’s hand-rubbed collages all about eating.
 
An art exhibition and reception like EAT ART are best when planning is begun early and allowed awhile to simmer, so all the flavors come together and mature. This one’s been in the making since back in the days when my 22-year old 4-Runner starts to act out her advanced age, and I find myself without transportation on and off.
 
I call Josie and ask to hitch a ride to an afternoon party at Ann Leach’s house in Joplin. “Sure,” Josie responds, “but I’m going to pick up a friend first, and then we’ll stop at Spiva. I’m moderating a talk by a guest artist. We’ll probably be late to the party.” What fun!
 
Fun is a centerpiece of Josie’s life. Her joie de vivre is effervescent. You decide you can do whatever your heart is putting you up to, when you spend time with Josie. I never seem to get enough of being in her presence.
 
We both have très full days as we do our twin spins at our respective non-profit art centers. Josie’s spinning as the Executive Director of Spiva in Joplin. And me? I’m spinning as the Director-Curator of artCentral in Carthage. Thank goodness distance for a drop in isn’t a deterrent when time allows. Josie lives just down the street from Hyde House!
 
Josie’s home is like Josie—“old soul” and sparkling new, too. Both have history. Both are bright and eclectic. Both vibrate with edge. I love ‘em! I want to party with Josie every chance I get, even if I have to chase her around the block. That’s what I did a few years ago. I saw her solo exhibit at Spiva (long before she assumed her Spiva directorship), and I thought, “I want some of this!”
 
That show was an early version of the journey Josie’s art continues on our Hyde House walls today. Bottom line: Josie journals her heart’s meanderings, blows them up big and bold for all to see and makes them into art. What you see is always something that reminds you of yourself and the arc of your own journey, whether you’re finding your place in your community or your loves in life or your relationship with food.
 
Josie’s current place-finding meanderings and musings are artfully food-food-food-centric. In her words, “Food is loaded with design components. Color, texture, endless shapes and forms create a composition on a plate or platter. And bonus! This is art we all can eat and share. I am truly obsessed. Maybe for the first time ever. Planning, researching, buying ingredients, laying it all out (this even has a term ‘mise en place’), prepping ingredients, assembling, tasting, seasoning, cooking, waiting and then eating, usually with a loved one.”
 
“The thing that excites me most about food as art,” continues Josie, “is that the possibilities are endless. I know I will never learn everything about every dish, and that even if I make the same recipe ten times it will be different each time, depending on my mood, the season, the ingredients, and with whom I share the meal. And heck! We all have to eat. A few times every day. Why not make it art? And make it delicious!”
 
If you’re not yet hooked on showing up for EAT ART’s opening reception (Friday, April 6, 2018, 6:00-8:00 p.m.), check in with my Art Notes next week. I’ll give you a lot more juicy, mouth-watering EAT ART tidbits that will make you want to practice a little “mise en place” (MEEZ ahn plahs) of your own.
 
“Mise en place” is the French term for the exquisite ordering of items practiced by a skilled chef to assemble a meal quickly and effortlessly. You’re going to want to reach for your calendar, get all your to-do’s in order and pick your just right time to enjoy EAT ART during artCentral’s weekend gallery hours, April 6 through May 20: Friday and Saturdays, noon to 5:00 p.m. and Sundays, 1:00-5:00 p.m., or by appointment at (417) 358-4404.
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Chopsticks, if you want them, are on us!

Moving east to New York City I’m taking my son, thirteen, and my daughter, nine, away from all they’ve known in Little Rock. Yearning to explore the connections between creativity, sensuality and spirituality, I go in search of understanding. I want to paint and write about this triad within a fertile cradle with an expansive worldview.

I enroll in The Art Students League and in masters theological studies at General Theological Seminary in Chelsea. Founded in 1817, GTS is the oldest seminary of the Episcopal Church. Facing onto a central quadrangle called the Close, red brick neo-Gothic buildings ring around an entire Manhattan block pungent with history.

Clement Clarke Moore, famous for penning A Visit from St. Nicholas (The Night before Christmas), owned the estate "Chelsea", which included most of what would become the neighborhood by that name. He donated sixty-six tracts of land—his apple orchard—to become the site of the seminary.

Our third floor apartment looks over the school’s richly wood paneled refectory. Scenes from the Sean Connery’s poignant movie, Finding Forrester, were filmed here.

Audrey walks to and fro Greenwich Village and her school at St. Luke’s in the Fields. She plays basketball and joins the fencing team. Her art portfolio wins her acceptance at Fiorello H. Laguardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts, the inspiration for the movie, Fame.

Simon tests into Stuyvesant High, a specialized school offering tuition-free accelerated academics. Every school day he commutes crosstown on his bike bought on a back street in the Bowery. With his two new best friends, Aram and Jesse, he establishes Children for Worldwide Peace with an iconic image of the globe as the group’s motif. On Sundays we all take an uptown train to gather and play in the Sheep Meadow of Central Park.

Though our visits back to Arkansas are infrequent and our communications limited before the days of cell phones and face time, we know we are deeply loved by the homefolks we’ve left behind. As Mother continues making her fiber arts, her gifts arrive in the mail—skirts for Audrey, exquisite crocheted angels for our Christmas tree and for Simon’s bed a hand-stitched quilt adorned with the symbol for Children for Worldwide Peace.

Since my family’s NYC adventure, Mother has passed and a couple of decades, too. Simon, married to Liko, is thriving in the tech industry in Seattle. Audrey’s bank job has her commuting between Manhattan and Paris as she and her husband Lex, raise our granddaughter, Sophie.

Mother’s quilts are with all of us still. My husband, David, and I cherish a couple of her beauties, as well as those passed to him through the quilters in his own family of needle-working women. Hanging on our wall is a lovely drawing made by David depicting his grandmother whose wedding band he wears today. She’s busy with her needlework while her grandson, David, sits nearby to sketch her stitching her fibers with love.

These days David’s and my conversations are often quilt-centric as we anticipate artCentral’s October regional juried exhibition, The Art of Quilting, set to fill our galleries October 5 through November 18, 2018. As artCentral’s prepitor (worker person) David will collaborate with me on the installation.

For months now, I’ve been meeting and planning with four gifted Carthage quilters: Jinny Hopp, Ruth Potter, Barbara Montague and Sandy Swingle. They came to me inspired to create a showcase for the talents of regional fiber artists like themselves. Their vision is fully manifesting. The call for entries is out. Visit artCentral’s website: http://www.artcentralcarthage.org/the-art-of-quilting.html, download your entry form today and put your needle to stitching.
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Art Speaks presented by the Joplin Regional Artists Coalition remains at artCentral through March 18. For information call (417) 358-4404.

Historic Hyde House serenely stands sheathed in white simplicity on the crest of a gentle hill at 1110 East Thirteenth Street. When built by the Hyde family in the 1890’s, this two-story American Foursquare overlooked acres of richly producing orchards and a commercial nursery.

The Hydes’ daughter, Katherine, born in 1912, became an amateur artist who traveled extensively. After her father’s passing in 1945, she returned to Carthage, managed the family’s greenhouse business and remodeled her family home. The 1950’s iconic pastel colors of Ms. Hyde’s interior decorating palette¬—mint green and pink—are preserved today in the locally crafted cabinetry of the vintage kitchen and the tiles found on washroom walls and floors upstairs and down.

Inspired by her love for art, in 1989 Katherine Hyde bequeathed her family home and property in trust to the Carthage community, to be used exclusively for the promotion of the arts. Since 1998, this elegant farmhouse has been home to artCentral¬—the non-profit arts center for Carthage and neighboring communities where the art of hometown, regional and international artists is featured in spacious, light-filled galleries.

Today Hyde House has two large downstairs Main Galleries, the Sandy Higgins Members Gallery upstairs and the Bob Tommey classroom/board room/gift boutique. My director-curator’s studio/office occupies the former window wrapped sleeping porch. The upstairs library, with a loveseat, tables and chairs from Katherine Hyde’s original furnishings, offers a quiet reading room and salon for sampling the more than 400 art-related books and media on the shelves of the library’s growing collection.

Shortly after taking my position as director-curator in 2015, I and my board of directors had the great pleasure of naming artCentral’s library in honor of former director Sally Armstrong. With her careful curation during her tenure, Sally created today’s lending library which is just one of the many benefits available with a supportive membership donation to artCentral.

When I ask Sally for the library’s backstory she explains, “Initially I found very limited art volumes at Hyde House. The idea occurred to me that I could donate my own extensive art library—a lifetime collection of art references, histories and texts—to fill in the gaps.’’ She realized, “I could still have use of these books, but make them available to others and gain valuable shelf space in my home. I added some smaller donations of books offered from members closing out their own collections, and then I began buying specific titles relating to various workshops we held, such as life drawing and pastels, as well as topics relating to summer artCamp classes like needle felting and Manga art.”

“I like to think this library is a resource of riches available to both members and our local art students, to be used by them for both leisure and education. Current categories include art history, artists in various media, ceramics, sculpture, photography, sequential art, western art, famous museum collections and art business including art sales, pricing, marketing and exhibiting.” An additional category, one of my own favorites, includes art-related novels, both fiction and non-fiction.

Recently over lunch, Sally shows me her newest novelistic donation for artCentral’s shelves, “Sargent’s Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas” by Donna M. Lucey. I immediately exercise my director-curator privilege and drop this beauty into my book bag to take home and pre-read before shelving at artCentral.

For me reading is a best-loved part of any day. In the evening after my husband, David, builds a fire, we settle into our comfy chairs with puppies beside us for some page-turning time before bed. The 246 pages of “Sargent’s Women” turned much too quickly. This fascinating multilayered biography is based on letters and diaries that tell the stories of women whose mysteries, passions and forbidden love affairs challenged society’s restrictions.
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David’s next in line to enjoy this artful narrative. Just as soon as he finishes his turn, you’ll find this treasure ready for your borrowing from artCentral’s Sally Armstrong Library—the room full of books at Hyde House.