Photo by Andria Lo. Pickled vegetables by RicePaperScissors

Maybe you’ve had your fill of friends posting pics of their latest meal on social media. If you are hungry for something more satisfying than pin-ups of perfectly plated pancakes, sundaes dripping rivulets of caramel or lurid lasagna, feast your eyes on the images in Sip. Savor. Share!, a photographic love letter to San Francisco’s food and drink, markets and mixologists, sponsored by the urban art collective Femme Cartel. The show opens May 9 and runs through May 26 at the Mission’s Roll Up Gallery.

The show features the work of local artists:
• Molly DeCoudreaux (head photographer at SF.Eater.com, frequent contributor to Refinery29, The Bold Italic)
• Aleksey Bochkovsky (contemporary art photographer)
• Andria Lo (documentary and editorial photographer, including at 7×7)
• Anna Vignet (SF Chronicle contributing photographer and cookbook artist)
• Sarah Deragon (owner/head photographer of Portraits to the People)
• Flee Kieselhorst (portrait and fine art photographer)
• Gennesis Gastilo (photoblogger at Mother Cerveza)

Femme Cartel food photography show

Femme Cartel is known for showcasing cutting-edge, urban art, from tough to girly. Its founder, Emily Howe, calls herself  “a community organizer at heart.”  ”We started with shows that focused on women artists because they seemed to have second-class citizenship in art world. Now we often include a male artist (who supports feminist ideals),” says Howe. Bay Area Bites interviewed the co-curators of this food photography show and two of the featured artists.

Bay Area Bites: You’ve done graffiti inspired art and a hip take on fashion illustrations.  Why food now? 

Emily Howe: We love San Francisco and Oakland and the food world encompasses social justice, community gardens and feminist foodies. For many years, women were relegated to the kitchen, then they joined the workforce but were  STILL expected in the kitchen as supermoms. Now, there is a return to the domestic arts, but we are reclaiming those domestic arts in new ways: it’s a choice to bottle your own beer or pickle your own vegetables.

BAB: Why a focus on female photographers?

EH: In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to think about gender, but if you look at who gets in art shows, who wins grants, who are the curators, jurors, art professors, deans of art schools — across the board it’s proportionately more men. The breakdown should be 50/50, but the big names are dudes. One of our goals is to showcase emerging artists and help people get their first show with an exciting launch. Christina Bohn, my co-curator and I  picked images that we loved and would buy ourselves. We also wanted to represent certain themes: coffee culture, cocktail culture, food trucks, Asian food, Mexican food, nightlife.

Christina Bohn: It’s timely now since the Bay Area is so into food and hand-crafted cocktails. And we include a range of images from instagram photos to fine art.

BAB: How did you find the artists for this show?

CB: We have a roster of artists who we’ve worked with in the past, but they represent more fine art, mixed media and collage. Not so much photography. We like to tap into the well of emerging artists. So we hit the Internet hard, Google, Craig’s list. San Francisco is such a beautiful melting pot of people from all walks of life. We wanted to include different threads that make up the whole scene. We pride ourselves on being a launching platform, finding artists who have never had shows and giving them opportunity to get their work out there. We love to connect people. Sometimes we know of a hair salon or pizza place that needs art on their walls and we can match them up with someone from the community.

photo by Molly DeCoudreaux – Bar Tartine

Professional photographer Molly DeCoudreaux grew up in Oakland. “What got me into loving food was the ten years I worked at Baywolf, moving from busser to waitress.” DeCoudreaux enjoys showing food communities, cheese-makers and chefs at work in the kitchen as well as bringing focus to small upstart companies.  ”I can relate to them because I’m scrappy too, I work hard, in a physically strenuous business.”

As for being part of Femme Cartel’s female-focused art show, she says, “Most photographers are men, it’s a gendered profession. There’s a lot of gear and electronics. Sometimes I go into a restaurant with all my bags of gear and some guy still says, ‘Oh, are you here for the waitress position?’ (And I’m 33!)”

DeCoudreaux shoots striking, non-traditional portraits of drag queens, porn people as well as weddings. “Weddings have a certain stress because they only do the ceremony once,” she says. “Food sits still – unless it’s a hollandaise sauce that breaks after 15 seconds.”

She admits the hardest food to photograph is BBQ. “It’s just meat covered in sauce, it can look like a brown mush. You have to light it and garnish it so it isn’t just a plate of brown.” She doesn’t usually work with a food stylist, relying instead on chefs who plate their food artistically. “I like collaborating, being in the kitchen, trying to stay unobtrusive. I like to show real people doing their work.” Instead of a perfect peach tart, for example, DeCoudreaux would prefer something a little lopsided. “It doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful,” she says.

photo by Andria Lo – condiments at Chinese restaurant

Andria Lo, documentary and editorial photographer and photo director for Hyphen Magazine, grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, where, she says,  ”There weren’t a lot of Chinese people. We ate Mom’s Chinese cooking at home and didn’t go out to eat at Anchorage’s Chinese restaurants.” When Lo and her family moved to Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley, she experienced culture shock at the plethora of Chinese restaurants.

Lo caught the photography bug as an art student at UC Berkeley. “It was the magic and camaraderie of the darkroom,” she says, “where people are working individually and collectively at same time.”

Although professionally, she photographs products, portraits, weddings and other subjects, Lo says, ”food photography is one of my passions. You get a finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the city. I especially like shooting the great energy at food events — like ForageSF dinners — it’s a challenge to capture the excitement in the air.”

One of the hardest places to shoot, Lo explains, is in professional kitchens. “While the dining room may be gorgeous, the fluorescent lighting, stainless steel counters and dirty dish racks present a challenge. I have so much respect for chefs. I’m visually stunned by the plating they come up with. My favorite perk is getting to eat their dishes. It’s an impetus to work fast, so that the food is still hot.”

photo by Anna Vignet

Anna Vignet: “There’s a huge variety of world flavors in only a handful of miles in the city. I love trying food from different countries with friends and learning about a country’s food and culture.”

photo by Gennesis Gastilo

Gennesis Gastilo: “Mother Cerveza is a love for the art of mixology and as in imbibing, a love for the people with whom you share your drinks. In the spirit of an intensely diverse and welcoming community, Femme Cartel’s show in San Francisco has at the heart of it: Love is indeed a miscible thing. (Peace begins with a beer).”

photo by Aleksey Bochkovsky

Aleksey Bochkovsky: “I’ve always fed off the energy from streets in big cultural cities. I need to be around people to steal moments of interaction and real feelings, however subtle. Food is a social experience and street food, in particular, interests me for its bouquet of demographic gatherings.”

photo by Sarah Deragon

Sarah Deragon: “One of the reasons I adore San Francisco is because of the dynamic foodie/bar culture. Femme Cartel continues to make history with their unique curatorial projects. I’m elated to be part of this show.”

photo by Flee Kieselhorst

Flee Kieselhorst: “I am a professional freelance portrait and event photographer and the key to my heart is food. When Femme Cartel (my favorite lady positive art organization) announced the call for entries for “Sip.Savor.Share!” I thought “Yes! An excuse to EAT!” My work in this show represents a few consecutive Fridays walking around San Francisco, meeting and shooting new folks, and of course…eating too much!”

Information:
Foodie Photography Show runs May 9-26
Opening reception May 9, 6-9 pm, food provided by Pachamama Cookery
Address:
Roll-Up Gallery
161 Erie Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
Twitter: @FemmeCartel
Facebook: Femme Cartel

“What is a ‘tea blend?’” is a Downton Abbey-inspired mix of almond, vanilla and cream teas accented with rose hips.
Photo: Sasha/Adagio Teas

Post by Lydia Zuraw, The Salt at NPR Food (04/29/13)

Apparently, fan fiction and fan art aren’t the only options for expressing your love of Sherlock, Doctor Who and The Hunger Games. There’s also tea.

If you visit the online tea store of Adagio Teas, you’ll find a collection of “Fandom Blends.” They’re the teas that customers have mixed and named after characters in favorite TV shows, books, movies and comics.

“Eleven,” one of Cara McGee’s blends inspired by the new Doctor Who, is described as “quirky and dark.” Amy Pond — a blend in honor of one of the doctor’s recent time-travelling companions — is a fiery orange, cranberry and rooibos vanilla c. Photo: Cara McGee/Adagio Teas

The company started allowing customers to create their own blends on the website in 2008. But the service really didn’t take off until about a year ago, when comic artist Cara McGee decided to blend some Sherlock teas on a whim. She was initially inspired by a Moriar Tea graphic that played on the name of the detective’s archnemesis, Moriarty.

Two of McGee’s teas inspired by the latest BBC incarnation of Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick.
Photo: Cara McGee/Adagio Teas

These days, Adagio’s site offers more than a thousand user-created “fandom teas” that anyone can purchase. McGee herself has made about 150 blends, and she’s designed her own label art for them. So why express your fandom in teas?

McGee calls “Bilbow Brew” — inspired by The Hobbit – her current favorite fandom blend. It combines Irish breakfast, sweet potato and vanilla green teas, and tastes “kind of like breakfast in the Shire,” she says. “Smaug,” on the other hand, has lapsang souchong, candy cane and ginger teas in it. Photo: Cara McGee/Adagio Teas

“It’s not just something that another person can look at on their screen,” McGee says, “but they can actually order it and have it in their hands. And unlike a shirt or other merchandise, you can really experience it.”

“Sellsword Spirits” was inspired by Bronn from Game of Thrones. Photo: Aun-Juli Riddle/Adagio Teas

ThinkGeek is another company selling geeky beverages (specifically, Star Wars-themed), but the flavors aren’t crowdsourced, and there are only three currently for sale: Star: Vader’s Dark Side Roast Coffee, Dagobah Green Tea and Hoth Cocoa.

Ilya Kreymerman, Adagio’s chief technology officer, says he doesn’t know of other food or beverage companies out there that let the consumer design their own flavor — especially not ones based on TV and book characters. “Tea lends itself well to that,” he says. “Historically, people tended to create their own blends and share them.”

We haven’t come across other crowdsourced fan foods like Adagio’s, but if you have, let us know.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

The Cat. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

Post by Maria Godoy, The Salt at NPR Food (4/25/13)

Clovers? Hearts? That’s small fries, guys. It’s time you met The Cat:

That 3-D creation is the work of Japanese latte artist Kazuki Yamamoto. The 26-year-old resident of Osaka creates ephemeral works of art in espresso and foam.

Anime Character. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

From whimsical monsters crafted from milk froth …

Foam monster. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

… to adorable homages to favorite childhood cartoon characters …

The Peanuts cast. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

Yamamoto’s art makes you regret the need to consume the canvas.

Yamamoto has made a name for himself on Twitter, where more than 82,000 followers receive daily tweets with images of his latest creations. But he’s hardly the only latte artist to emerge from Japan.

Einstein. Photo: Courtesy of Kohei Matsuno

That caffeinated Einstein, for instance, is the work of Yamamoto’s friend Kohei Matsuno, a 23-year-old originally from Osaka who now works at a café in Tokyo. (He’s on Twitter, too.) Matsuno’s subject matter varies widely — from anime characters to Lady Gaga. He also takes customer requests.

I like to surprise people, Matsuno, who also goes by the name Mattsun, tells The Salt. (NPR’s Yuki Noguchi kindly translated for us.) He says he’s always looking for new images.

Monkey. Photo: Courtesy of Kohei Matsuno

Lately, Matsuno has started recreating famous works of art — like this take on Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Photo: Courtesy of Kohei Matsuno

A toothpick and spoon are Matsuno’s primary tools in creating such fine details. The milk and foam parts go on first, then he uses toothpicks to add “shading” with espresso. The whole process, he says, takes about three to five minutes. Yes, that means the beverage isn’t always piping hot when it reaches drinkers’ lips, but hey, they say you’ve got to suffer for your art.

Sure, we have latte artists in the U.S., too, but from what Matsuno tells us, it seems to be more common in Japan. So why bother to craft a masterpiece in a mug when it’s just going to disappear down someone’s gullet?

I put the question to noted design philosopher Leonard Koren, who has written about Japanese aesthetics. He pointed me to two Japanese concepts — wabi-sabi and mono-no-aware — both of which hold, in part, that “many things are beautiful precisely because they are short-lived and fragile,” Koren told me via email.

“For example, the Japanese love the cherry blossom metaphor,” he writes. “Because cherry trees blossom for only a week or two every year, when they do blossom, there is the emotional poignancy of knowing that it is only a temporary state of affairs.”

“If you can memorialize cherry blossoms in poetry—which the Japanese do,” says Koren, “why not do the same for latte foam?”

Harry Potter. Photo: Courtesy of Kazuki Yamamoto

It’s not a bad approach to life when you think about it — always seeing the potential for magic in the mundane.

Big hat tip to Rebecca Subbiah, who blogs at Chow and Chatter, for introducing us to these two artists.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Caitlin Freeman. Photo: Charles Villyard

Andy Warhol as Jell-O, Jeff Koons as a gilded white hot chocolate, and Cindy Sherman as a pink ice cream float dusted with glitter are just a few of the edible art concepts cooked up by Caitlin Freeman, an artist who creates confections and fancy snacks based on special exhibitions at SFMOMA. Her new book, “Modern Art Desserts,” details recipes and stories from her self-made dream job: responding to art through food.

Freeman co-owned Miette pastry shops before opening the Blue Bottle Coffee bar at SFMOMA’s rooftop garden with her husband James. From Miette, she brought along artist and pastry chef Leah Rosenberg, and assistant Tess Wilson. The team’s desserts are innovative, creative and sometimes controversial. A cookie plate inspired by Richard Serra’s massive steel sculptures is likely the first dessert to have ever received a cease and desist letter.

Click on any photo to view full-sized images and activate the slideshow

Freeman credits painter Wayne Thiebaud with inspiring her to become a baker, and says the book is a love letter to him. Her favorite cakes to bake are buttercream party cakes, and that’s exactly what Thiebaud is known for painting. The two cake-loving artists haven’t met yet, but Freeman throws a birthday party for him every year at the cafe. Besides her most popular cakes modeled after works by Thiebaud and Piet Mondrian, 70 modern art desserts have been created over the past four years. Textile artist Ruth Laskey’s two-color weavings became conceptual sodas where flavors were assigned to each color, creating combinations like lemon soda with bay ice cubes, and bubblegum soda (made from Dubble Bubble gum concentrate) with violet ice cubes. Freeman was interested in the overlap between colors and flavors, a concept that went through some trial and error when she focused on Andy Warhol’s self portrait in green, blue, red, and yellow. She tried to make a Bloody Mary gelée and explains, “I didn’t want to use food coloring but I figured we could use blue curacao. We made Campbell’s tomato soup Jell-O, celery, horseradish and Worcester Jell-O, and it was revolting. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but that was the one recipe that didn’t really work out.” Her aversion to food coloring had to be overcome for her Mondrian cake, a chocolate ganache grid with primary-colored cake blocks, but she’s not the only one who is wary of unnatural-looking cake dye. She says, “People easily gobble up the yellow and red, but often they’ll leave the blue square on the plate.”

Dessert is based on Garry Winogrand’s “Kerrville, Texas” (1977). Photo: Willa Koerner.

Freeman’s latest concoction, inspired by a Gary Winogrand photograph, is an ambitious multimedia project. As she describes it, “The piece we chose is these two people dancing on a platform that looks just like an ice cream cake. So we’re making this ridiculous multimedia cake that involves Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” playing from an MP3 player inside the plate, which happened to be the number seventeen song the year the photo was taken, and looks exactly like the song they would’ve been dancing to. We’ll have two images laser-cut as cake toppers that will be dancing on the cake.” The desserts are often conceptual, and sometimes literal, like the Jasper Johns-inspired grilled cheese that looks like his piece, Bread. As Freeman describes the project, “The piece is a lead panel with a piece of bread on it, so we made a grilled cheese and served it on a to-scale board painted to look like lead. It was a giant, oversized board people would have to carry back to their table.” She likes that her creations can help make the art more accessible, and says that when she walks into a gallery of California painters, “especially Diebenkorn and Thiebaud,” she often wants to take the paintings home, and says:

“Making desserts is my way of owning something, of really pretending that I’m stealing it, and making it my own.”

“Modern Art Desserts” was released this month by Ten Speed Press. Freeman’s Mondrian cakes will soon be available for purchase online (available for delivery, packed in dry ice). Keep up with her projects at modernartdesserts.com.

Photos of desserts reprinted with permission from Modern Art Desserts: Recipes for Cakes, Cookies, Confections, and Frozen Treats Based on Iconic Works of Art, by Caitlin Freeman, copyright (c) 2013. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc. Photo credit: Clay McLachlan (c) 2013

Ernest Hemingway once said, “A man does not exist until he is drunk. Photo: AP

Post by Lydia Zuraw, The Salt at NPR Food (4/18/13)

Sure, we all know alcohol has fueled plenty a writing session. William Faulkner — who once said, “civilization begins with distillation” — was known to have kept a bottle by his side while he typed away throughout his writing career.

But for centuries, writers relied on alcohol to keep the words flowing in a far less boozy form than the Burroughs and Hemingways of literary history: the wine ink pen.

Wine, it turns out, was a key ingredient in many recipes for iron gall ink — for all you non-ink nerds, that was the writing ink used by most of the Western world from the Middle Ages all the way up to the 19th century.

“Anyone anywhere near famous will have something in iron gall ink,” says Elmer Eusman, head of the conservation division at the Library of Congress.

A 1297 copy of history’s great political document the Magna Carta was penned in the stuff. Van Gogh drew with it, Da Vinci jotted notes with it, and Bach composed with it.

“The practice of adding wine into historic inks was quite widespread,” says chemist Matija Strlic, a senior lecturer at University College London who has worked with historic parchments and inks.

The chemistry involved can get pretty wonky, but basically, the wine was believed to make the coloring agents in ink more stable. Wine was also considered a purer solvent than water. And iron gall inks were prized because they were so indelible.

So why did these inks fall out of favor? Sadly, they didn’t play nice with the newfangled steel pens of the 19th century, says Abigail Quandt, head of book and paper conservation at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The inks corroded the writing implements, so different formulations had to be developed.

Which conservators would probably say is a good thing. The inks weren’t just corroding pens, but also the paper on which historic documents were written. In some of Rembrandt’s drawings, for example, the ink has made the paper fragile and brittle, Eusman says.

Still, the wine ink tradition is not completely dead.

Recently, Spanish winery Casa Mariol unwittingly revived it when it decided to send pens filled with a cabernet sauvignon-based ink to potential clients as part of a new marketing scheme.

“You cheer with wine after an agreement and, with our wine pen, you can even sign the agreement with the wine,” Miguel Angel Vaquer — who runs the family business with his siblings — tells The Salt in an email. He didn’t mention whether the pens had drummed up wine sales, but he did say that people around the world have been asking about buying their wine ink pens.

It’s not clear how long interest will last, if recent history is any guide. Brian Goulet says he used to stock wine inks from a German company for his Goulet Pen Co. but doesn’t anymore. Apparently, they didn’t sell very well.

“As fountain pen inks, they performed OK,” he says. “It was more the novelty of the fact they smelled like the wine they were made from that appealed to people.”

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Macallan – Whisky Art. Courtesy of Ernie Button

Post by Audrey Carlsen, The Salt at NPR Food

Ernie Button was putting a Scotch glass left out overnight into the dishwasher when he noticed something — a white, chalky film on the bottom of the glass. He held it up to the light and, upon closer inspection, could see a series of fine, lacy lines running along the inside of the glass.

As a hobbyist photographer whose work often focuses on showcasing the beauty of everyday objects, Button was intrigued by this discovery. “Wow, there’s something to that,” he recalls thinking.

And thus was born Vanishing Spirits: The Dried Remains of Single Malt Scotch, an ongoing photographic project Button has created to highlight the beautiful but often overlooked science of how liquids dry.

After first noticing the patterns left behind in his glass, Button began experimenting with other Scotch residues, shining different colored lights on them and photographing them up close. The results were strangely beautiful. “A little celestial, or extraterrestrial, almost,” says Button.

Aberlour – Whisky Art. Courtesy of Ernie Button

That was six years ago. Since then, Button, who lives in Phoenix, Ariz., has captured upward of 75 photographs of whisky residues that he considers good enough to share with the public.

Some of his images will even be making their way over to Scotland in May for an exhibition at the Islay Festival of Music and Malt.

And Button doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. “I’m trying to let the work just kind of grow organically and see where it takes me,” he says.

He recently started experimenting with manipulating the whisky as it dries — moving the liquid around to create different deposit patterns.

He has also begun to wonder about the science behind his images. “I find them fascinating in a weird kind of way,” he says. “I think it’s a perfect blend between science and creativity.”

According to Howard Stone, head researcher at Princeton University’s Complex Fluids Group, the rings and waves seen in Button’s images are probably the result of particles that are left behind once the alcohol has evaporated.

These particles, which give the liquor its flavor and color, are present in “very, very small quantities,” says Stone, and can create an “imprint of what the [whisky] was doing when it was trying to evaporate.”

Research has shown that aqueous films tend to form ringlike patterns as they dry. This is because evaporation occurs more quickly at the edges of a liquid, thus drawing particles in the liquid outward.

Inspired by Button’s artwork, Stone is now conducting research with two of his postdocs, Ian Jacobi and Eujin Um, to further investigate the properties of dried whisky residues. In particular, they are looking into why different types of whisky produce subtly different patterns.

Button has noticed this as well — that using different types of whisky makes a difference. “It seems like the Scotches that are more inland, like a Glenlivet … tend to produce finer lines,” he says.

But even as he tries to better understand how these patterns are formed, Button never loses sight of why he felt compelled to photograph them in the first place.

“I’m a big admirer of finding the beauty in the normal or the sometimes overlooked,” he says. “Take time and observe. … There’s a lot of beauty out there, if you just look.”

Images Courtesy of Ernie Button

Copyright 2013 NPR.

An aerial photo of Santa Cruz-area food and drink makers. Photo credit: Andrea Blum of My American Pantry and Kenny Blum Photography.

Andrea Blum has spent much of her life following others. She once followed a cheesemaker back to his village in Italy to learn about where the milk came from. That’s also how she ended up in a butcher shop in Switzerland watching the curing of meats, or in a basement in Austria sampling homemade schnapps.

“It’s a passion of mine to go beyond what I’m eating and find the story behind it,” Blum says.

That curiosity about the people behind our food led her to create My American Pantry (MAP), a start-up company that promotes regional food and drink producers across the country. Blum is laying the groundwork for an online marketplace with a series of aerial photos of food artisans with their goods.

“I think of it as a Kickstarter for food artisans, where people can launch their businesses but in a very curated, beautiful and artistic way with recipes, videos, multimedia,” says Blum, who is a culinary artist in residence at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga.

Andrea Blum with her brother Kenny, who built the remote-controlled helicopter used for the aerial photo.

MAP just held its second aerial photo shoot in Santa Cruz on Sunday with nearly two dozen local food and drink makers, including the Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing Co., Creative Cultures, Uncommon Brewers and Shelley’s Biscotti. The first aerial photo took place in Marin last month.

The aerial photos are a way for Blum to bootstrap her company while she fine-tunes her business plan and raises capital. She says she may turn to Kickstarter herself to drum up funds so she can travel around the country taking photos of food and drink makers.

Blum plans to stitch the photos together into a multi-layered atlas. Users will be able to view food makers by region, along with their personal stories, recipes and videos. They would also be able to purchase products through the online marketplace, which she hopes to launch later this year. Blum also envisions regionally-focused cookbooks with recipes from the MAP producers.

One of the first videos MAP produced is a profile of Connie Green, who is something of a local legend who leads chefs on foraging expeditions and owns Wine Forest Wild Foods.

“She talks about her passion of collecting things in the woods, collecting mushrooms,” Blum says. “She was able to make it into a business that really represents herself. She made it her life.”

In Santa Cruz, a new group of food and drink makers gathered at the Homeless Garden Project farm in Santa Cruz with examples of their products, including apples, jams, sausages, mini-kegs and even a mild-mannered black duck.

Denise Arasin is a volunteer at the Homeless Garden Project farm and founder of Duck Lovers Adoptions.

The farm is community supported with some 1,200 volunteers, which Blum realized added another layer of meaning to the photo. This gave her the idea of also highlighting non-profits that are contributing to local food systems and economic development in future aerial photos.

During the shoot, Andrea Blum controlled the camera while her brother Kenny operated the remote-controlled helicopter, which he built.

To take the aerial photos, Blum uses a camera strapped to a remote-controlled helicopter built by her brother and fellow collaborator Kenny Blum. It rose above the group of food and drink makers assembled in a grid.

The Blums use two different remote-controlled helicopters for the project, including one with four propellers and one with eight, which is shown here and used in windy conditions.

“As a food producer, you don’t get to lay down very often,” says Melinda Harrower, owner of Melinda’s Gluten Free. “It was nice to just lay in the sun in a field.”

Shelley Fryer, owner of Shelley’s Biscotti, read about the photo shoot in the local newspaper and loved how Blum arranged the first group of artisans in Marin to resemble a quilt. Fryer hopes people will appreciate the diversity of food makers represented in the MAP photos, some of whom she’d heard about but had never met.

Shelley Fryer launched Shelley’s Biscotti 16 years ago in Santa Cruz. She says she hardly ever misses a day at the bakery.

“I work all the time so I don’t really see other people who do what I do,” Fryer says. “I’m aware of them but haven’t had the chance to connect, so it was nice to have that opportunity.”

Kristen Cederquist, co-owner of Serendipity Saucy Spreads, also doesn’t get many chances to hang out with fellow food producers in such a laid-back setting. She even discussed a potential collaboration with Chris LaVeque, a butcher with El Salchichero.

Melinda Harrower of Melinda’s Gluten Free and Kristen Cederquist of Serendipity Saucy Spreads talk shop in between photos.

Cederquist sees the MAP project as another way to tell her story and add a human dimension to her products. She and her mother have been making fruit preserves since they were both children and they created their company out of this family tradition.

“It’s not made in a factory,” she says. “Everything is made with our hands and we love what we do.”

Fresh produce has never been hipper.

Need proof? Check out this video of Brooklyn-based songwriter-producer-artist extraordinaire Jonathan Dagan, better known as J.Viewz, playing a beautiful — and just plain awesome — cover of Massive Attack’s 1998 hit “Teardrop” on a variety of fruits and vegetables.

J.Viewz is using a cool little circuit board called the MaKey MaKey (pronounced may-kee may-kee) that allows you to hook almost anything up to a keyboard.

The MaKey MaKey uses basic principles of circuitry to turn any object — even an apple — into a keyboard key. Illustration: Jay Silver/Flickr

Your computer can’t tell the difference between a signal coming from the MaKey MaKey and a signal coming from an actual keyboard. So this little chip basically allows you to transform any object that conducts even just a tiny bit of electricity into a keyboard key.

And if you’ve got a virtual piano keyboard program like this one pulled up on your computer, then you’ve just created your own unique musical instrument.

All J.Viewz did was to take it one step further by rewiring the circuit board to connect with an electronic piano keyboard instead of a computer keyboard.

Making a banana piano is easy with the MaKey MaKey. Photo: Jay Silver/Flickr

We certainly thought so, and plenty of other people seem to agree.

Since the MaKey MaKey was released last year, people have been posting videos of themselves playing sweet tunes on all sorts of edibles, including oranges, doughnuts and even seafood. But if you really want to impress your friends, we suggest you opt for a true classic: the banana piano.

Copyright 2013 NPR.

Google Doodle February 14 Valentine’s Ferris Wheels

Today’s February 14 Google Doodle covers some territory by integrating the celebration of George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr.’s birthday (154th) and Valentine’s Day. George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. was an American engineer who created the original Ferris Wheel for the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. His design challenge was to “Out-Eiffel Eiffel,” the structure of the Paris International Exposition of 1889.

George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. and the original 1893 Chicago Ferris Wheel he designed

I thoroughly and somewhat obsessively enjoyed exploring all the various interspecies dates depicted in this interactive animation. Since their compatibility or lack of was not based on the animals signs in the Chinese Zodiac I stretched my imagination for the connections. The Tortoise and The Hare was the only pair I was familiar with based on a classic story. And this theory may be far-fetched but the choice of these typically taboo couples may be related to the popular martyrology associated with Saint Valentine which claims he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. If you have any thoughts on the choices of these animal pairings please share. (Google Doodle explanation)

My foodcentric focus then zeroed in on the Valentine’s dates that are food-related:

The Hare and The Tortoise

The Hare and the very late-to-dinner Tortoise Valentine’s Date

The Octopus and The Bear

The Octopus is not thrilled with The Bear’s choice of sushi for their Valentine’s date dinner.

The Rabbit and The Dolphin

The Dolphin is not initially excited by The Rabbit’s traditional inedible Valentine’s gift – but the magic hat comes through with the perfect gift of love.

The Fox Alone

The Fox fantasizes about The TV

The Fox shares Valentine’s Day with some popcorn and The Tube

The Artist and his Canvas. Leo Villareal at Bay Bridge. Photo: Lucas Saugen

The next time you are on the Embarcadero at night, you many want to look up, up, up. A recent dinner outing to Palomino Restaurant to catch up with Chef Adam Jones, profiled for Bay Area Bites LGBT Pride last year gifted me something extra: the chance to see the Bay Bridge lit up in a spectacular and unusual fashion. Palomino staff and guests were downright giddy to see the blinking lights on the bridge that has traditionally gotten short shrift when compared to that other iconic bridge on the other side of the Bay.

The Bay Lights is the name of a living art sculpture with 25,000 lights that is said to be the biggest of its kind from artist Leo Villareal. It is a definite coup to have Villareal on this privately funded project, because he is known for his expertise in using LED lights and computer-driven imagery. Plan-ahead types may want to book that restaurant dinner now for March 5 to see the main lighting event. Everyone else can rest easy knowing that the Bay Lights will be shining bright for the next two years.

Homes, restaurants and bars along the Embarcadero have the best views of the Bay Bridge, including Waterbar, Epic Roasthouse, Sinbad’s, Perry’s, Americano and Chaya Brasserie. Bay Area residents can also expect frequent testing and sequencing in the nights leading up to March 5. If you have a friend lucky enough to live near the Bay Bridge, butter them up to nab an invite now!

I interviewed Villareal recently to find out more about his work, where to view The Bay Lights, and how Burning Man played a role in his creative process. His comments have been edited for clarity and grammar.

Bay Area Bites: Give us your personal take on The Bay Lights project.
Villareal: My initial impulse was to add an additional layer to this already rich environment. I did not want to overwhelm the site but to augment it by creating a very integrated artwork. I believe my work will allow people to see this iconic piece of infrastructure in a new way.

The final concept is remarkably close to my initial idea. We have fought to keep the project as pure as possible, firmly rooted as an artwork. Each of the 25,000 lights is individually controllable and can display 255 levels of brightness. I write custom software that is based on simple rules but that creates sophisticated effects mimicking those found in nature. My interest is in how a set of numbers can appear to have personality and life. All my work is abstract with no images or text. I engage chance in my process and I am interested in the process of discovery.

The Bay Bridge. Photo: Lucas Saugen

The Bay Lights. Photo: Lucas Saugen

Bay Area Bites: What are your ties to the Bay Area? What does this art mean for the Bay Bridge and Bay Area as a whole?

Villareal: The Bay Lights is absolutely site specific. It is custom made for its environment and takes its inspiration from the systems that surround it– the traffic, weather, organic systems all factor into the abstracted movement of the lights.

The Bay Area is incredibly inspirational to me. I lived in San Francisco in the early 90s and worked at a research lab in Palo Alto. There is such a wonderful spirit of innovation and creativity that opened my mind and helped me to integrate art and technology in a deep way.

Bay Area Bites: The Bay Area is home to many Burning Man fans. You have long-term ties to Burning Man yourself. How does that relate to the Bay Lights?

Villareal: I was inspired to created programmed light installations in the mid-1990s. One year, at Burning Man, I put up an irregular grid of 16 blinking lights above my encampment to act as a beacon. I used it to get home after a long night out on the playa. The art-making both on and off the playa evolved from there.

Bay Area Bites: What do you like to eat while you are in San Francisco working on The Bay Lights?

Villareal: Antipasti and pizza funghi with Fontina and black truffle oil at Americano.

Octopus carpaccio, oak roasted Ono and Tomales Bay Oysters at Waterbar.

Hog Island clams and baked eggs at Zuni.

Related Information:
The Bay Lights
Twitter: @TheBayLights
Facebook: The Bay Lights