repetition: murakami, warhol & the relief society sisters

a byu student museum intern in andy warhol wig and murakami lapel flower (murakami flower motif #1)

julie turley, it's date night again!

guru's famous sweet potato fries.

and downtown provo was hot tonight--the rooftop concert series, the friday night dance walk, and all the restaurants now have outdoor seating.  which is great in utah, because we have beautiful evenings here.

from our table, we could see a group of dance-walkers on the corner, um, dance walking.

we went to guru's and had their famous sweet potato fries with their signature fry sauce, which has a little somethin' somethin' extra in it.  worchestershire sauce?  we watched the cute young couples at dinner, sat outside, where a whole row of restaurants were also featuring outside seating.  there were lots of people out, which was thrilling after the empty college town summer.

it was almost like a weekend in manhattan, julie turley!

murakami flower motif #2.

after dinner, we went to the opening of the warhol/murakami show at the byu museum of art (moa).  the exhibit had some fantastic pieces in it.  highlights were seeing all ten marilyn monroes together (the way you see differences in sameness when they're all together), as well as murakami's mr. dob series.

murakami flower motif #3

christian found the warhols moving.  maybe in contrast to the flatness of the murakamis?  i need to discuss this with him further.

at any rate, we both thought it was the best warhol show we had ever seen.

murakami flower motif #4--not sure if this was murakami's arrangement or the museum's.  i'm so confused about which motifs came first!

the opening party included it's own decorative repetition: flower-shaped balloons a la murakami.

echoed in the flower cookies

echoed in the felt flowers worn by the student interns running the show.

oh, yeah, and you could sit at tables be-centerpieced with grass in big campbell's soup cans.  & you could bring a soup can and enter a drawing to win an ipad.

long hairs at byu.

there was also a long-haired, barefoot band, whose name i could never find out.  they were very good.  a little zz top-esque, if the members of zz top were cute and twenty.  loud, too.  what's happening, byu?  why are you letting long-haired rock n' roll bands play at your art openings?

silver clouds installation

such a thing would have been verboten when we first arrived here more than ten years.  things are opening up here.  sometimes they close up again, like after julie and i were here in the eighties under president jeffery holland who ran a looser regime and took byu up a notch.  after that. well.  i don't want to talk about what happened after that.

one thing that was fun about the opening was its unabashed mormon-ness.  all the coordinating (not to mention the big silver balloon room--a warhol installation-- and the dress-up photo booth, now fashionable at mormon wedding receptions--is this a thing at non-mormon weddings?) was like a really great night at relief society.  mormon women love their coordinating.

my 15 minutes of fame:  renting a room in ultra violet's upper east side pent house one summer.  and being co-bridesmaids with her in a friend's d.c. wedding.  in violet satin dresses, no less.

just like at the 8-bit show a few months ago, where the pac man-influence of the show was highlighted by the hand-creweled ms. pac man bows worn in the hair  the interns and the faux pixellated lettering on all the signs labeling EVERYTHING in sight.

soup can centerpieces.  

the highly-coordinated opening tonight was both oddly relief society-esque as well as oddly congruous with the repetitive imagery of the show itself.

i love this weird place, and all of its wonderful juxtapositions.

wildcrafter, artist, & urban homesteader raquel smith callis

raquel on a "garden tour spree"

raquel smith callis is one of my sheroes.  she has been involved in getting our farmer's market going, our first night gallery stroll, and getting the city of provo to allow backyard chicken coops. she is a trend setter and a trend maker and helps to make provo a more environmentally and aesthetically progressive place.  

she also makes really rad textile art and paintings.  i love her blog gritty pretty, and you can see some of her artwork, textiles, garden and home projects there.  i promise you'll be inspired!

My twentieth high school reunion is this summer (Provo High School class of '92!).

It's time to reflect! 

On the glory days (ha!) but mostly I'm reflecting about butterflies.

Butterflies and their proverbial wings fluttering and innocently causing maelstroms!

You know how a short conversation can change the course of one's life even when that conversation was never intended to be consequential? There's a large cloud of those rabble-rousing butterfly wings that have changed my course countless times. One of those seemingly everyday tiny-cause-and-huge-effect occasions is coming to mind right now...

As a teenager i froze for fashion. I wore strappy shoes and very short skirts all winter and believed it was a responsible idea to cap Provo with an enormous dome providing citizens with year round climate control (73 degrees being ideal!) Then my bishop's wife told me about her daughter's discovery of environmentalism and plans for earth day. I had never heard of earth day nor environmentalism. My mind was blown! (By the way, my then bishop's daughter now blogs here.)  All these years later I love being in tune with all four seasons and plant and harvest according to the phase of the moon. Every day is earth day. Yup, my current life style is pretty different from what I imagined in high school. 


Though I still think its awesome to wear short skirts and bare feet in the winter and FEEL the weather.

What do you want GITP Readers to know about you?

I'm on a garden tour spree.  Got an aloe vera plant on your window sill?  I wanna see it!

Here are photos from a tour I went on this last week. A garden in Orem (Provo's neighbor) that uses many permaculture principles such as aquaculture, vermiculture, etc.

And here I am with my son Ezra in our garden this morning.

raquel and ezra--outside all day, every day

  
Are you in a tight place, and if so, what are you doing to get out of it?

Have you seen the movie Girl on the Bridge? Contortionists are sexy; tight places are a requirement. But wow, when a space opens up and you can twirl with reckless abandon? I figure that's where i'll end up as a crone, twirling in the great wide open.

What do you hope to accomplish this year?

As a mother of a toddler i have quit having expectations to accomplish much. We're outside all day everyday enjoying nature, visiting with friends, in the garden stuffing our faces with berries, chomping on fennel or out in the mountains wildcrafting.

 
What inspires you?

Everything! Wait. That's not true! The rampant ugliness of our sprawling built environment is very uninspiring. But then i challenge myself to change my perspective about beauty and embrace strip malls and chain link fences. But vinyl fences can go to hell (there are many negative health effects of polyvinyl chloride in its production, use, and disposal.)

What is your favorite leg wear?

In the summer: bare legs under two skirts. Two skirts are handy when you're always harvesting something; one skirt becomes an apron to gather up fruit or transport freshly laundered clothing to dry on the line. In the winter I love wearing tight corduroys under tunics.

a break/through?

ingrid's key lime pie, garnished by anna

i was lamenting to julie about last week's boredom.  no drilling company, shakespeare in the parking lot, no plethora of coffee shops, no unbelievable numbers of creative music concerts or experimental theatre festivals here, like julie turley has in just a ten block radius from her apartment.

but then i somehow got to a place where i could chill and enjoy what i have right now a little better and have had a fantastic weekend so far.

we spent the day up in woodland, utah with my cousin brent touring his farm, where last year they won first place in the world cheese competition for their smoked cheddar.  we canoed, collected eggs, rode the atvs and ate a ton of fantastic & truly artisinal cheeses.  i'll write in more detail about that later.

steven's scarf as tie look at provo bicycle collective

last night was a cool evening at the provo bicycle collective, followed by ingrid's amazing key lime pie.

tonight lalage plays in salt lake city.  wish julie turley could be there.

tomorrow is ingrid's birthday, and there's so much crazy baking going on at our house.  lula just made meringues, ingrid has half-made a coconut creme pie, and she requested some lemon curd strawberry cupcakes for her 20th birthday tomorrow.  i'm not sure what those cupcakes will entail exactly, but i'll figure it out.  ingrid told me last night, that, as she only has six weeks left with a kitchen before returning to bryn mawr,  she has decided to carpe diem, or as she sad it, "carpe kitchen."  thus her baking mania was born.  which is cool with me.  a little messy and a little pricey, but fun.  and pretty, and delicious.

so, more details to come.  i've had an unexpectedly busy weekend.

black sheep cafe: what's right in provo

i don't know what we're doing for tonight's date night, but here's a recap of last friday night, which was pretty awesome.

first of all, we ate at the black sheep cafe.  i had been longing for dinner al fresco on the sidewalks of new york or seattle.  a close third was dining outside on the sidewalks of provo on university avenue.  it was a gorgeous evening, and we had a view of Y mountain and a couple at the justin hackworth studio across the street from where we were sitting posing near the window of a second floor walk-up for their wedding photos.

it was very ny/provo.  eating on the street, mixing food with the fumes (ny--i love food & fumes!!!) while watching a very young & surely prematurely engaged couple prepare to marry (provo).  (driving around downtown provo, we saw no fewer than three couples doing outside "urban" engagement photo shoots--against peeling brick walls, rusty chain-link fences, etc.)

but i digress.

chile verde navajo taco

what i really want to say is go eat at the black sheep cafe, a newish restaurant on university avenue's 100 block featuring navajo-inspired southwestern cuisine.

seriously, people.

this place is fun (there's a silver smith working in an open studio) and the cuisine is interesting but also crowd-pleasing.  i think even the pickiest eaters i know (or should i say unadventurous?) would still like it.  the first time i ate there i brought ten teen-aged students and everyone of them loved it.  but i was happy with it, too.

also, this is a classy joint, and it's a home-grown joint at the same time.

my students think i'm a weirdo because i won't eat at national chains.  they simply don't get it.  but i won't for lots of reasons. turns out i'm not the only one in provo who feels this way.  check out what la ney ferme, our local community supported agriculture farm (provo's first and only one!), has to say about it.

1) i like to spend my money to support people who live in my community.

2) i want downtown provo to have as much vibrancy and diversity as possible.

3) if you eat in a local restaurant, you have an increased chance of not getting a microwave dinner from the commissary kitchen of, say, the olive garden.

4) i want to know who's making my food and why.  turns out i'm not the only one in provo who has these crazy ideas.

but i keep digressing.  here's a run-down on black sheep.

1) the service is warm and you can tell that someone who knew what she was doing took the trouble to train the staff.  in a college town where servers are prone to be students in first serving jobs, this is refreshing.  they were able to talk about the food and give detail oriented service.  one or two little gaffs, like stacking the plates in front of the diners, could easily be polished up.

2) they use real linen on the tables.  i love this.  it just feels good.

3) and (this is most important next to the service.  i hate bad service as much as i hate bad food.) : they make all of their sauces, breads, desserts, chips, etc. in-house.  this is hard to do and most restaurants cut corners by using cans or prepared sauces or factory made breads and (heaven forbid) i've even been served costco desserts at some joints.

we had a green chile navajo taco, the bleu burger, their blue corn chips and salsa, and an orange creme brulee.  every item was good.  (on my previous visit, i had the pork chop sandwich, which i loved.)

the fry bread was light as a cloud with a very tender-crisp skin on the outside.  the green chile was also quite good.  the chips were light and crispy, the salsa smoky and nice, and the oil was fresh (nothing ruins a meal faster than rancid frying oil).  the bleu burger was actually cooked medium rare, as we had requested, and the melty pockets of blue cheese mixed into the burger, the fantastically crispy hog's jowl, the caramelized onions, the reduction sauce, and then the fresh navajo naniskadi flat- bread it was wrapped in elevated this burger.  c. is a real burger connoisseur and he pronounced it to be one of the best burgers he'd ever eaten.  i concurred.  the habanero orange creme brulee was subtly-flavored and well-prepared.  the sensation of the habanero on your tongue added interest to what can be a run-of-the mill dessert and the orange essence was not too overpowering, as orange flavoring tends to be.

so you should seriously take your family to eat here when the come to town for the fourth of july/stadium of fire/freedom festival/family reunion week.  they'll love it.  all of them.  i promise.  and you'll be doing your part to keep a really well-done, made-by-hand restaurant in our community.

this is byu campus

after eating at black sheep cafe, we went to byu to see the art opening of eight bit by michael whiting, who did a pixel-inspired show of big, metal pac-manesque sculptures.

the stag

most of the pieces were in the byu sculpture garden, a space populated by a lot of realistic bronzes.  it was so great to see this big minimalist & kind of post (or post-post?) modern sculptures in juxtaposition to the gorgeous gardens and the much more traditional sculptures in the permanent installation.

refreshments consisted of multi-colored blocks of rice krispie treats

ingrid is interning at the byu museum of art and was working at the reception.  she hit the nail on the head when she said that  the reception could only have been pulled off by relief society-trained women.
it was truly coordinated in every detail.  see that food sign? that's what i'm talking about.  did we need a sign telling us that food was on the table?  no.  but was it more fun that way?  of course.

sexy rice krispie treat close-up

also, no offense, relief society sisters, but the food looked awesome, but wasn't as delicious as it could have been.  you know i love you!  don't take it personally, relief society sisters.  it's just that you sometimes care more about how things look than how they taste.  i'm probably just jealous because i lack the crafting gene.  my food looks bad but tastes great.

also, there were short-shorts and cool tights on campus.  you don't see that frequently.

one of my favorite pieces

did i say you should visit this show?  you should.  after you take your family to black sheep cafe.  it's very kid friendly, and the garden is lovely, and shown off in a whole new way with this instillation.

note the sculpture behind the cat head.  that's typical of the other sculptures in the garden.

a lotta leg was showing that night.  i loved the stripe on stripe action.

cecily went around looking for fashionable attendees to photograph.  thanks cecily!

dj working the reception

all the kids attended the reception and loved it.  the rice krispie treats, the sculptures, the dj, the beautiful evening.

cecily loved this look, and snapped the photo for me

we stayed until closing time.  it was that fun.

it's kinda hard to see, but heather as polka-dot on polka-dot action going on.

art historian heather belnap jensen (and former GITP guest blogger).

these flower centerpieces also echoed the pixelated theme, and were hand crewel embroidered.

the gals also embroidered hair bows/bow-ties for the staff.

ingrid and all the staff wore pixellated ms. pacman bows.  the dudes wore them as bow-ties or boutonniere.

ingrid, another art historian and former GITP guest blogger. . . .

bare bones & parking lot chic

muse music in provo=totally rad & what we used to call punk back in the day for it's minimalist bare bones vibe

one of the cool things about living in provo is how unexploited it is.  whereas in julie's town (which is truly my favorite town in the world--look at the amazing things she gets to do/the amazing fashion she sees in just one day in this post alone), every last inch has already been discovered, gentrified, and jacked through the roof, provo has plenty of space,  and it's cheap.  so what provo artists might miss from a super energetic art scene, we might be able to gain in contemplative space, an unhurried pace, and lack of interruption.

while i do think we need to make the effort get out and about to the bigger cities to guard against isolation and unexamined provincialism, i find living here to be akin to a lifetime artist retreat because of the amount of uninterrupted meditative space the open and relaxed and beautiful environment fosters.

tonight for instance, which is date night even for married couples here in utah valley, for mere pennies, c. and i went to yoga and ate hot dogs and chili cheese fries at tommy's burger.  this bare-bones shack of a restaurant is a provo institution that's been around for decades.  it's new york tiny inside and a one-dude operation (always the same dude).  only about six people at a time can squeeze in to order at the counter, and all eating takes place in a big, empty parking lot full of chipped fire-engine red picnic tables.  unless you want to eat standing up whilst reading today's usa today open under two banks of plexiglass on the wall of the building so you can move from left to right and read the entire paper while consuming a bacon burger or a chili dog, standing up, at a twelve-inch wide red counter. (also, in between the two banks of news papers is a wall-mounted paper towel dispenser like you'd find in a restroom instead of a napkin dispenser.  so by the time the chili's dripping down your arm and you're almost to the sports section, you can grab a paper towel.  how efficient!  how industrial!  love it!)

notice the newspapers, changed daily, on the side of the building

tonight we sat in early evening sun and sweet little breeze, at about 75 degrees, and looked at the beautiful mountains, which is the other thing about this place:  whatever parking lot you're in has the such astoundingly magnificent views of the mountains that you feel like you're living in a resort.

last night we played at muse music with lalage. muse is another example of the kind of unexploited  resource a burgeoning (or even more established) artist might find in provo.

what i love about muse is this:  total bare bones, totally cheap, and totally accessible.  their menu of services includes a six dollar cover charge for four bands, a 25-dollar-an-hour recording studio (would anyone do anything in nyc for 25 bucks an hour, julie?), and 2 bucks for a cup of tea or hot chocolate.

so there it is.

two more reasons for people in a tight place, artists in a tight place, girls in a tight place, to dig downtown provo.

legwear:  first half of the day=nightgown legs, second half=yoga pants

looking forward:  to 80 degrees tomorrow/ spring cleaning and taking a bunch of stuff to DI


inspiration:  cool parking lots


p.s.--GITP supports pete ashdown!

ten more rad things in provo, part trois

1. provo peace  i was über disheartened by lady hate like this and this (the second one's personal, as my daughter's a barnard senior, my other daughter attends a women's college, and my husband and i both have degrees from women's colleges) recently, but boy am i heartened by the justice-seeking young people of provo.  plus, what good taste in poets they have!  i look forward to celebrating international women's day with them tonight.

2. gamelan bintang wahyu not every community has its own gamelan, an indonesian percussion orchestra, and we're lucky to have one right here in provo.  they played with the 700 student provo school-district elementary choir last night.  also, their director, professor jeremy grimshaw is super rad (and funny)  and has a new book out about experimental composer la monte young, of mormon extraction, who influenced everyone, i mean everyone, who did anything cool in music in the 60's and 70's.

3. slab pizza for five bills you can get a hand-stretched slab of pizza and a drink just south of byu campus.  their sauces are homemade--my favorite is the new mexico green chile with a fried egg on top.  love the convergence of artisan, locavore, and diy going on at slab.

4. kimberly johnson this gal's the real deal (or the 'rill dill' as we say in provo) of poetry.  she recieved a guggenheim this year, and her book leviathan with a hook is fantastic.  read it.  and know that poets are among us.

5. andrew the cheese monger technically he works in orem at the harmon's on 800 north, but just a hair over the provo border, so i'm gonna count it as provo.  andrew's for real (rill).  he went to cheese school and everything.  his cheese section enables provoans to create cheese boards like this one.  seriously, if you want to expand your taste buds and kick your parties up a notch in sophistication, go in and talk to andrew, get yourself five cheeses of various hard and softnesses, some bread, fruit, and beverages, and you'll be feeling all french in no time. (i'm excited to go make mozzarella with him tomorrow.)


6. elders every day my neighbor sets off in her black tracksuit with white stripes down the legs and arms at an alarmingly fast clip.  i don't mean fast for a 93 year-old dame.  i mean, the girl is race-walking.  she has never missed a day or slowed a smidgeon in the five years i've been her neighbor (okay, maybe that one time she got taken to the hospital in an ambulance).  but she was soon back to her walking, fast as ever.  the structure of our community means that we have a lot of mixed-age interaction, and i'm so grateful to know so many folks in their 90's.  vigorous, smart, classy, and giving me perspective on the world.  i'd love to know if we have more 90 year-olds living in provo than in other places, or if i just see them more often.  our clean living makes us prone to old age, and it's good to see people who do it with style.  (though i could wish my neighbor backed her white caddy out of the driveway just a tad more slowly.)

7. provo orem word, march edition, 2012.  check out the cool things provoans write and do.


8. dual immersion language programs we have spanish, chinese, french and german.  if i have my facts straight, we have to most dual immersion language programs per capita of any community in the united states.  i have a few concerns as an educator about full inclusion in these programs, which we can talk about some time, but in general, the more words we have to describe the world with the better.  i love that my community values language so much.


9. tight-knit communities of course we can always do better at making sure everyone feels included, but i think we do a pretty good job of taking care of our neighbors here.  we have a neighbor in need right now,  and i know our community will rally to help him.


10. kodaly string program kodaly is a lovely way of teaching music to children.  we happen to have creative and energetic music teachers here who, in collaboration with the district specialist dr. jerry jaccard, have created a string program integrating kodaly training.  as far as i know, this is the only kodaly string program in the world.  it's a beautiful thing, and the children can really sing and play here.  best of all, it's a public school program available to all children.

legwear:  bare under maxi-skirt
inspiration:  men and women working for equality
looking forward: to full parity

10 rad things about provo & happy birthday miss gertrude stein

gertrude stein, who reminds me to strive continously to forsake aesthetic timidity

there are, in reality, more than ten cool things about provo, but here's some stuff that's happening lately--a few that i just discovered:

1)  the provo river delta restoration project.  there are some hardworking environmentalists tenaciously trying to improve our air and water quality.  even resisters are beginning to relent. 

2)  downtown gallery stroll tonight.

3) we have our own sartorialist.  provo fashion isn't as cutting edge as some other places--and julie's street fashion shots are some of my favorite anywhere, but i love that this guy is looking for it.

4) the sundance screening room.  this tiny theatre is where the sundance film festival started.  in the past few months they've featured free screenings of redford films, and they always show sundance best of fest screenings for locals.  oft times you can schmooze with r. redford himself, if he's not having one of his aloof days.

5) muse music and velour.  i don't go to these places often, feeling that it would be a little creepy at my age, but i like knowing they're there, and that provo is developing some homegrown sounds.

6) communal.  i'm gonna go out on a limb and pronounce that a resataurant without interesting vegetable sides is not worth going to.  i sometimes go for dinner here and order just sides.  not that we need the new york times to validate us, but here's a shout-out to communal in the times.  and here's a sample menu.

7)  the walden school.  i'm lucky enough to have been able to send three of my children here, and to get to teach here.  it's a truly progressive public school, and i get to teach rad classes like this food/writing hybrid and last semester's performance art class.

8) the provo orem word.  a lovely online publication showcasing the pretty deep pool of local talent.

9) amano chocolate.  this rad dude is my neighbor.  he has a real chocolate factory with vintage machinery.  he roasts his own beans, trained with jacques torres, and is the only american to win the grand prize at the royal academy of chocolate in london.  not that we need london to tell us that provo is rad.

10) tryst press letter press.  we take the word seriously around here.

i've written about this before, but i'm gonna say it again:  we've got tons of hardworking, brilliant, and talented people in provo, utah.  but we can be aesthetically timid and intellectually repressed.  i say this with all the love in the world, hoping that my people will break out and bring it a little harder.

seriously.  this is my hope and prayer.  amen.

legwear:  jeans and cowboy boots.  a provo winter classic.
inspiration:  mt. timpanogas.
looking forward:  to dinner with my man and gallery stroll tonight.

p.s.--yes.  nicki minaj.  here's what one ph.d has to say about minaj in the ever-so rad crunk feminist collective.  

p.p.s.--happy birthday, miss gertrude stein.  your tender buttons are with me always.

sunny valley

january at utah lake

today we went out to utah lake--i love being in the bowl of our big open basin right after a snow. on all sides, the cusp of the basin is made of mountain.

we went out to look for birds in the marshland on the edge of this un-beautiful lake, but only saw nests, and heard the ice melting in the cattails.

going to the lake always reminds me of two local heroes, oliver smith and raquel callis smith. oliver is a bioneer and he and raquel run their own little urban homestead in downtown provo, complete with a root cellar, the fantastic tree house (click on the link below), chicken coops, and an aquaculture pond in process. oliver has a great blog about the junesucker fish, an endemic species that has nearly gone extinct, and that local environmentalists are trying to revive. for as long as i've known raquel, she's been at the center of local art and culture. she used to live and work in the downtown space art front, she was a key player in starting the provo farmer's market and also the provo gallery stroll.  she's also a very adventurous artist.

the reason the lake reminds me of raquel and oliver is because it makes me think about how hardy, optimistic, creative people can take a less than perfect body of water like utah lake--shallow, silty, and wide--and turn it into something beautiful and inspiring.

after you look at the callis-smith tree house and their fabulous blogs, check out our photos from the lake today, including some great shots that cecily took on her new pink fisher price camera.

i'm outside! and i'm happy!

hand me down purple boots.  not my style, but warm, and karmically acquired

moses with binoculars--taken on cecily's fisher price camera

cecily the photographer

handsome husband