Playing with Food - Encore et Encore...

Oui, oui, it is summer.  The flies are fat and delicieux.  The other grenouilles of Caroline screeeee et pop et crique in the dusk.  It is a busy time.  Etienne once again has received vegetables for play and food from the farm of Deux Poussins.  These mesdames agricoles save fruits and vegetables with bizarre shapes for Etienne, and he images them as something else.

Last week they gave him a pomme de terre - a potato (a word très drôle, and which the wide mouth refuses to pronounce as Etienne does, to his amusement).  It was a potato très drôle, aussi.  But Etienne had to fly away before he could dream over it.  (He says he flies in an "air bus" but I will sooner see Etienne sprouting wings like a dragonfly, et voila, buzzing away in the dawn.  Flying is for insects, birds, bats, et la repartie.)  "Anyway," as les enfants say in the cul de sac, no painting, no play.  Last week Etienne was the "dull boy" in the story about Jacques and all work.

This week there was a tomato (encore, the wide mouth must stretch and make kissy O's to say this in the way américain).  Potato - tomato.  Bien.  The one imaged the other. 

Once home, Etienne set the tomato on it's ear (or head or derrière - I do not understand the anatomie of fruit), and voila, it was something else and the pomme de terre was transformed.  Chat et chien.

So Etienne made both dreams.  First les animaux (le chien will regret pushing the nose into the kingdom du chat), then the kiss ancient, which he pictured in a flash at the market when the tomato was first presented.  Clicque on the images for the better view.

The final image is a peek of La Royaume Pacifique, the "Peaceable Kingdom" on the bureau of Etienne.  Oui, I lived in that place for years when, tout à coup, I was whisked to the artiste colony of the kingdom where I live now with trilobite, baleine, large acorns of "burr-oak," and le poulet de verre vert.

Et voila, il est à la fin.  Au revoir,

Grenouille

Playing with My Food - 2012 Number 1

Two Chicks Farm has a regular spot in our local farmer's market, and a regular spot in our Saturday schedule, as we pick up greens, peppers, potatoes, carrots, chard, etc. The two chicks have been passing me the occasional unusual vegetable to inspire posts called "Playing with my Food."  The first one for the 2012 growing season was what I called a Siamese Cucumber.  I thought of several things as I pondered the unusual shape of the double cuke.

I decided to make a maquette, a paper puppet.  This is actually my second (the first will be the subject of a post when it's fully assembled)- inspired by a post by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, who created a five part blog post series showcasing entries by various "maquetteers."

So here is my green clawed crab - modeled on the ghost crabs which frequent our NC beaches.  It's about a foot wide, in this view - watercolor and light fast Prismacolor markers on scraps of Arches hot press paper.

Below is an "exploded" view of the maquette.  If actually assembled, there would be paper fasteners at all the joints, so the crab could be moved like a paper puppet.

Thanks to the ladies for the interesting produce.  After playing comes eating...

Previous food play:  One,  Two,  Three