Barmy Art

The Bugs Bunny Syndrome

I have a variation on the “Bambi complex,” “Bambi factor,” or “Bambi syndrome” which are three terms used interchangeably for sentimental, sympathetic attitudes toward wildlife, especially deer. They are usually used derogatorily and reflect a backlash against  humane, anti-hunting, and preservationist values, and the excessive sentimentality that Bambi has often come to symbolize.  Although I have no problems eating venison, I couldn’t eat any of the delicious civet of rabbit that Steve cooked for our equinox feast.  So mine is the Bugs Bunny syndrome.  Elmer obviously has it too.

Originally released on July 27, 1940, A Wild Hare is noteworthy as the first true Bugs Bunny cartoon, as well as for settling on the classic voice and appearance of the hunter, Elmer Fudd.  The opening lines of both characters—”Be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits” for Elmer, and “Eh, what’s up Doc?” for the rabbit—would become catchphrases throughout their subsequent films.

For our feast last weekend, I cooked a chicken dish from the Caucasus, a geopolitical region between Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.  The region was once a crossroads of trade between Asia and Europe.  These cultural influences,along with the unique geography of the land have created an enviable culinary tradition.  The post-Soviet state of Georgia has a cuisine that is rich with fruits, pomegranates, spices, nuts, rice and meat (but not rabbit).   According to Georgian legend, God took a supper break while creating the world. He became so involved with his meal that he inadvertently tripped over the high peaks of the Caucasus, spilling his food onto the land below. The land blessed by Heaven’s table scraps was Georgia.

The recipe I chose is chicken baked with an earthy pomegranate and walnut sauce – perfect for autumn, with a side of steamed runner beans and chard AND rice pilaf made with golden raisins.  Not only is this dish rich and savoury, but it is very beautiful, scattered with ruby pomegranate seeds.  Shouldn’t our food be a feast for the eyes as well?

“Every Georgian dish is a poem.”
–Alexander Pushkin

Chicken with Pomegranate Sauce

• 4 boneless whole chicken breasts, or a chicken cut into 8 pieces
• 3 pomegranates
• ¾ cup shelled walnuts, ground or broken into small pieces
• 1 small onion or 2 shallots, minced
• Salt and fresh black pepper
• Flour for dredging
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 cup chicken stock
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• Pinch of ground coriander
• ½ teaspoon sugar

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C.   Cut each breast in half lengthwise.  Cut 2 of the pomegranates in half and press out the juice with a reamer.  Break the third pomegranate open and extract the seeds, working over a bowl to catch the juices.  You should have approximately 2/3 cup pomegranate juice and 2/3 – 1 cup seeds.

Season the chicken with salt and fresh black pepper.  Dredge them in flour, shaking off the excess.  Heat the butter in a frying pan and lightly brown the chicken on both sides over high heat.  Transfer to a baking dish.  Lower the heat to medium and cook the onions or shallots for 3 minutes, or until soft, adding the walnuts halfway through.  At this point you may need to add more butter to the pan.

Deglaze the pan with lemon juice.  Add the pomegranate juice, stock, cinnamon, coriander, sugar and a little salt and pepper.  Simmer for a minute and correct the seasoning with salt, pepper, sugar and perhaps a squeeze of lemon.  The sauce should be balanced between sweet and sour.  Raise the heat and reduce the sauce to coating consistency, in which it is slightly thick and clings to a clean spoon.

Cover the chicken with the sauce and bake for 15 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.  Sprinkle the chicken with the remaining pomegranate seeds and serve at once.

გემრიელად მიირთვი!

On the back burner

We had roast chicken for Sunday lunch and guess what that means, ladies and gentlemen?  Chicken stock.  Yup, the simmering carcass has been perfuming the house all evening.  After another hour, I’ll strain out the bones, add leftover roast potatoes, onions and mushrooms, some haricots verts, a bit of pepper and salt and . . . .  Voila! Chicken soup.

One of the loveliest things about soup (besides eating it) is the process of making it.  Putting everything into a pot and leaving it to simmer for a few hours, stirring it occasionally, sipping the broth, adding a pinch of this and a splash of that, nibbling a vegetable to gauge its doneness.  Is it soup yet?  Not quite .  .  .  .  aah, yes.  Now, it’s time to make a batch of cornbread or crisp up a baguette, ladle it into bowls, pour a glass of wine.  The soups that I love to make are not fast food.  The long, slow making of it nourishes the soul as well as the body.

At times, within my artist-self, I still get caught up in doing rather than being.  Focussing on the goal and not the process. Forgetting that the essence of being an artist is who I am and how I encounter the world, not what I make.   I must admit to feeling slightly lax as an artist these past few months.  Production- wise anyway.

But cut myself a break!  I have moved a couple of times since last October and haven’t had a dedicated studio space for the past nine months.  Since April, Steve and I have been busy, busy, busy as bees setting up home in our flat.   I brought my batterie de cuisine and a couple of pieces of furniture and Steve has been living on his boat for the past three years.  We’ve pretty much set home up from scratch.  Yet there have been shimmerings in the back of my mind of “Why haven’t you  .  .  . You should be .  .  .  Look at what s/he’s done  .  .  . “

But creating a home is like making a work of art.  Steve and I both adhere to the maxim of William Morris – “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” and it truly has grown into an oasis, a peaceful and beautiful retreat from the world.   We’re having a housewarming party this weekend to celebrate our home and it will be the first of many welcomings and gatherings of friends.

And a few days ago I found a box in my studio with some pieces, ideas, beginnings of artwork.  These also have been on the back burner, simmering and bubbling away.  Now that I have the vessel – my studio and time, I can assemble all of the components and see how these beginnings and glimmerings will transform into finished pieces.

Over the past few months, I’ve held them in my mind’s eye, mentally adding ingredients gleaned from here and there.  Precious Metal Clay, gold size and bronze powder, new fonts, feathers and some sheer packaging material from an Argos box – perhaps an inner layer for a transparent quilt?

Ingredients

Wild delight

After work today,  I cycled home along the footpath that goes through Sowton Mill.  The setting sun cast its honeyed light on the bank of the river that I rode along.  I paused for a while, basking in the lazy golden sunshine and drinking in the beauty of the wild daffodils, primroses and celandines – the heralds of springtime.

buddha

buddha

In his book Divine Beauty, John O’Donohue writes about the delights of yellow:

“The colour holds such warmth, brightness and attraction for us because it is the colour of the sun, the source that sustains us.  In terms of its physics, yellow has absorbed red and green and then reflects yellow back.  Red is the colour of life, blood and fire; and green the colour of growth and hope.  Little wonder that yellow has such a life-giving brightness. . . .  Goethe says: ‘Yellow brings with her the nature of brightness and has a delightful, encouraging, exciting and soft quality.’  We see this in spring with the daffodils.”ddha

buddha

buddha

Wild daffodil and wood anenomes

Moonlight Ride

The past couple of nights, the moon has been nearly ripe.  The heavens are clear after much cloud and rain.  As I cycle away from the routine and familiarity of my workday, a pair of tawny owls call to each other from neighbouring oak trees.  Traffic is sparse enough that I can ride without my headlight.  The rainwet road stretches and winds before me like a silver ribbon, illumined by the light of the almost full moon.  Jupiter and Venus slowly rise like shining specks of hope hanging over the horizon.

As I cut down into the valley, the moon follows me, just over my right shoulder.  It skims and then dips behind the lacy, nearly bare branches of late-autumn trees, a shining pearl behind a delicately wrought filigree.

“I suppose there were moonless nights and dark ones with but a silver shaving and pale stars in the sky, but I remember them all as flooded with the rich indolence of a full moon.” – Willa Cather

As I journey deeper into the dark, more stars become visible .  .  .  .  .  compass points, celestial guides.  I follow Megrez and Phecda in the Big Dipper straight to Regulus, a triple star which glows in the heart of Leo. I am led home.

“We came together underneath the stars above. What started out as liking soon developed into love. I sense a certain something that, in my heart, felt so true that I knew I waited all my life to fall in love with you.” – Anonymous

Finally the hills rise enough to block the moonlight completely.  The familiar road and landmarks are shrouded in black velvet, yet the trees seem to shelter me as they line the banks on either side.  Closer to home, they arch to meet overhead and form a tunnel.  The stars dangle from their branches like fairy lights.

“I haven’t a clue as to how my story will end. But that’s all right. When you set out on a journey and night covers the road, you don’t conclude the road has vanished. And how else could we discover the stars?”- Anonymous

As I ride through, I see the lights of home twinkling at the other end  .  .  .  .  warmth and the journey’s end.

Cleaved

Cleaved

I have a piece of slate that the river brought to me a couple of years ago.   Unlike much of the slate that I have gathered from the river, which can be thin and brittle and shatters when I reach for it, this piece is quite strong.   It has a perfect crack down the middle of it and the two pieces can fit firmly together or when they are side by side, the space between them is so elegant and beautifully formed.  Even when they are seperate,  the space between unifies them.  They belong together and seem to symbolise my favourite quote:

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky”. – Rainer Maria Rilke

The most obvious and well known meaning of the red rose is deep love and affection. In the 18th century, a special rose language evolved as a means of communication between lovers who were forced by society to keep their feelings a secret. And the red rose came to symbolize true love that would stand the test of time. Staunch promising affection that is forever riding high is what the red rose means. The red rose denotes a true love that is stronger than thorns and can outlive all obstacles.

Desire is another facet of the red rose. The red rose expresses the throbbing heat of new love, a passionate expression of attraction. Red is the color of consummation, of raging desires and craving passion. The meaning of the red rose then is quite apparent from its color itself. The red rose speaks of love that awaits a passionate expression.

Some Etymology

The word cleave is at once paradoxical and numinous with seemingly opposite meanings:

1. to part or split, esp. along a natural line of division, and
2. to adhere closely; stick; remain faithful (usually fol. by to)

Cleave ‘to split’ comes from Old High German klieban, and became Old English clefoan.

Cleave ‘to adhere’ comes from OHG kleben and became OE cleofian.

Old English is a West Germanic language and was primarily a spoken language, though some written accounts remain, eg Beowulf. OE was a moderately inflected language, meaning that words had distinct endings which signified grammatical distinctions. Middle and Modern English lost progressively more of the Old English inflectional system.  Grammatical distinctions that these earlier inflectional endings signified have been lost.  In linguistics, this is called ‘levelling’.  In Middle English, the single word cleven came to represent both meanings and has further evolved into cleave.