Potato Piroshki &
Steamed Garlic Chive and Shitake Dumplings with Lemongrass Dipping Sauce

about

Variations on the Theme of Food

Everyone eats. Eating is as basic a biological necessity as breathing. It is a common thread that holds all human beings - in fact all living creatures - together. Perhaps as a result of this requirement for survival, human beings universally seem to use the act of cooking and the act of eating in ritualistic and traditional ways. Certain foods also tend to conjure up strong emotional responses from many people based on various associations and past experiences. All people share this thread, but the variations from culture to culture, individual to individual, geography to geography are nearly infinite. We explore these “Variations on the Theme of Food” through the shared creation of music, meals, and environment.

Since our primary interest is the personal experience, we based our work on recorded voices which were gathered through casual interviews with people who directly touch our lives in one way or another. Some of these individuals are people we know well, others are more ancillary facets of our lives, but all of them have some sort of relationship with us, creating another common thread. We have taken the personal experiences of our participants and combined them with our own aesthetic and philosophical sensibilities to create this work. The music combines a distilled amalgamation of the spoken voices with a series of musical variations based upon a set of simple motives. Recipes are interpreted from our oral interviews and are cooked and shared with our visitors in the gallery space.

We would like to thank the following individuals for their participation and candor, GASP Gallery for hosting The Threadcounts Project, and Leila Lee Mitchell, and Luanne Stovall for all of their hard work putting together this show.

recipes

Recipes

• Asparagus Soup with Parmesan Custards
• Banana Pancakes with Banana Caramel Syrup
• Bittersweet Molten Chocolate Cakes with Coffee Ice Cream
• Blueberry Boy Bait
• Cantaloupe Sorbet with Melon Confetti Compote
• Cornbread with Golden Raisins
• Crepes with Strawberry Marmelade and Marscapone
• Double Peanut Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Fresh Blueberry Pie with Cinnamon Almond Crust
• Green Salad with Apple Dressing and Camembert Toasts
• Guava Cheese Flan
• Jamaican Spicy Yellow Curry with Tofu
• Leek, Potato, and Tarragon Soup
• Lemon Meringue Pie
• Macaroni and Cheese
• Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream
• Pancit
• Potato Piroshki
• Roasted Peanut Honey Bread
• Samosa with Green Chutney
• Spice Cake with Pink Applesauce Filling
• Spicy Vegetarian Chili
• Steamed Garlic Chive and Shittake Dumplings
• Vegetable Pulao