Day Two: Food, but Make It Fashion.

Welcome back, Friends. 

     Did you miss me? lol. Maybe... Maybe not... lol.

     Well, I missed you all. I miss most all humans these days and that certainly is saying something, for me anyway. I'm usually very much a hermit, preferring the comforts of my cave and I rarely need or crave contact with others or the outside world, but I'm a strange bird and I like my cage... usually.

King Vulture, photograph by Miroslav Liska

     The craziest thing about everything that is going on is that most of us don't even know how to react to this global event that has happened that impacts all human life. That's HUGE and I can't even begin to process it, I mean not truly process it; in all its gravity.  I haven't created any reactionary art about this event because we are still living through it and I don't really work like that. I'm not a documentarian illustrator or artist. Once this event has run its course, I think I can be able to process this more as an artist and really find what it is that I would like to say and feel and emote and evoke about it.

     In the meantime, I can still create art therapy, which is different from an artistic reaction, obviously. I have been treating Ms. Pelto's art challenge as such.
Day Two's topic is "What's Cooking?"  I have been cooking quite a few things in quarantine. Nothing fancy, mind you. I'm not really all that great a cook. I basically learned how to cook things out of necessity. It was very utilitarian. I wanted a particular dish and then looked up a recipe and learned how to cook it.  I would, of course, tweak each recipe to fit my own personal taste, which I guess you could consider is "Southern." Southern-style cooking is what both my mother and grandmother cooked, so I grew up on it. Anyway...

     I was thinking that I didn't want to just illustrate some food in a bowl, because, like I said above, the food wasn't anything particularly fancy. On an off note, I do have these REALLY pretty hand-thrown and glazed ceramic bowls that I acquired during my time in South Georgia. (Shout out to the Americus-Sumter Arts Council and their Empty Bowls event.) 

So I thought, maybe I could make it "fancy."  I thought maybe it would be more fun if my food was floating down a street in a Parade of Fancy Food. I really liked this idea. It's fun and it's certainly something I'd love to illustrate and perhaps something others would expect me to illustrate. However, I really wanted to keep these challenge illos more on the simple side of things. More along the lines for what I would normally do for Illustration Friday or something kindred to it. SO I pondered on it some more, I mean... it's not like there was really a deadline for these illustrations. I mean, not really. So I have been taking my time and using them as my fun time; my fun art. The illustration work I do when I take a break from working on other obligatory work.

     So, I then thought how fun it would be to turn the food dishes into Fashion Models. Fashionably strutting down the runway showing us all that they're "Werkin' with." I knew I could do that in a more simple way so I began work on sketching some of the things I have cooked in quarantine and figuring out ways to transform them into Fashion Food Models. I did do a little visual research, but to be honest, I have watched so much Project Runway and, more recently Making the Cut (which I LOVED), that I really felt I might sketch these meal models in my sleep... Me sleeping dreaming of food, how typical of me. (Especially recently lol) I think we all have eaten a lot more than we normally would. My stress food has always been cake or breakfast food or cake for breakfast food... It all melts together after a while. I mean, Isn't it MonWednesSaturSunThursFriTuesDay today?

     There's not really much else to talk about or elaborate on this time, other than, unlike when I would do an Illustration Friday Challenge, I actually made a color comprehensive sketch for this one. I don't normally do that. I usually assign color on the fly. It's part of the exciting organic "live" nature of working on those fast projects. I like to keep them loose and fluid. I knew in the beginning that the Food Fashionistas were going to be a tryptic. Don't ask me why. I just KNEW it when I had the idea. I was like," Yeah, 3 dishes. Posing. I like that." *shrug* Organic nature, right? #ArtistsBrains 

      As far as how they connect to my actual life... well, they don't really. They were just some fun.  There isn't any real deeper subtext or life lesson to learn from them other than they are a pretty distraction from my normal life right now. well.. "normal" as "normal" can be, anyway. I wish I had a funny anecdote for you, today, but I do not. I'm sorry.  I said a lot of what I was thinking and feeling in Day One's blog entry. I have pretty much been doing what the rest of the world is doing, staying home, staying healthy (if possible), trying to stay calm and relaxed, trying to stave off anxiety or depression. I will admit that my sleep schedule is so whacked right now. I get to this normal balance of getting up early and going to bed early and then, for seemingly no reason I can't sleep then I'm up all night, and napping in the early evening and then I have to work hard to try and flip my sleep back to where it goes. I think it's subconscious anxiety reacting from what is going on outside my windows, what's going in my city and in this country and how it's being mishandled, how people are dying by the thousands each day, all the Facebook posts of people not really giving a fuck about keeping this virus curve flat enough until there's a treatment, people pretending it's "not a big deal", people whining about a goddamn haircut while they brandish their assault rifle into health workers faces, people that are so self-involved, people I honestly wished would be the ones dying by the thousand since their actions are so cavalier and putting others in danger...

     I just get so angry and fed up with it...  SO I just imagine myself in a big dress all dolled up and fashionable on my way to my mailbox... wearing a mask and elbow-length dinner gloves...

     I should just try to relax and get on a normal sleep schedule... lol. Whatever, right?! Perhaps I shouldn't be so hard on myself, and just roll with it, whatever it is. Adapt. So, on that note, let me present my new Runway Collection, Rice Beans & Veggie Sausage, Spaghetti & Veggie Meatballs, and Baked Spaghetti. Let them walk down this Kitchen Counter Runway and show you all "What They're Werkin' WIth." ;0)

     From my home to yours, Enjoy them. I hope they put a little smile on your stressed-out faces. I know they made me smile while I worked on them. They were mad fun to create and work on. Stay safe out there, everyone.  Cheers, Friends.

Until next time, friends,

Keep dreaming, keep sketching, keep thinking, keep laughing, and most important of all,  keep making art.

Cheers,

LEWIS