Street Markets

Another chapter of "MY BRILLIANT CAREER". Did you see that Australian movie or read the book? On a shoe designing trip to Spain, I went to Morocco. I fell hard for the souks and bazaars and dreamed of doing a coffee table book. Always practical, I figured I’d do a European flea market guide 1st. My shoe company sent me to London, Paris, Rome so I piggy-backed on flea market research. First day in London's Bermondsey Market, I met darling Graham, a free-lance antique dealer. He became my new flea market assistant. What did I know of antiques? The illo above was for Mademoiselle magazine. I had no typewriter so I hand-printed everything —sheer hell for my editor.

Grossett & Dunlap saw the Mademoiselle article and asked me to turn it into a book. I went off to design shoes with Graham along to explain silver marks and dealer tips in the weekend flea markets.

Here's a spread from the Paris Puce section..

Next I approached Mademoiselle on the souks and bazaars idea. They were thrilled. A book contract followed from Grosset. I'd earned my street market creds. This time I was comped by tourist offices as a guest travelwriter in their countries - all expenses paid. I was comped in Turkey, Greece, Tunisia, Isreal. In Iran I joined a group of travel agents to eat my fill of pistachios and caviar. Pas mal.

I had no "research assistant" for this project. Instead I used my imagination to come up with stories on the souks of Tunisia, Morocco, Turkey, Israel, Greece, Yugoslavia, Iran. I did have terrific help from Abrams book designer, Robert McKee (we met in an SVA graphic design class).
The book went to "blues" (the first publishing test run used for correcting errors etc.) But the Iran hostage crisis caused the Med book to be shelved. 

A US flea market guide was proposed next. First for Mademoiselle and then a 3rd book for Grosset. But problems surfaced. I don't drive. And it became all writing and little drawing.

Articles for Art News and others followed. Plus an illustrated column for a travel magazine. I accumulated a lot of antique junk in the process. But time to move on to another career.

To be cont.

Macaron Painter

Yesterday I had lunch with Viv from my old watercolor class...

We spent the hour talking about nutrition, nutrition doctors, diets, how bad our dressing-free cardboard chicken salad was,

blah, blah, blah

Then I walked down the street half a block to La Maison du Chocolat... and their windows were filled with macarons!
Naturally I had to enter for research purposes...
Yesterday K & S said, macarons! :) When she saw the Bouchon macs and she planted a thought in my head. It was time to drop the coffee cups and come home to MACARONS!!
They really are fun to paint. And I love the idea of all the crazy flavors and colors, even if I'm quite content to never try virgin olive oil macarons, the thought of them is fun.
So I've been thinking, jacket painter, chef painter, wine artist, shoe designer, etc., etc. Did I tell you about the 18 months I spent day-trading!!! I still can't believe I did it :) But macaron painter seems like something I could sink my teeth into...
I was listening to the Angelina Jolie interview and she tells of her experiences at
The Actors Studio - she had to become an ORANGE!
Kind of the way I feel when I'm painting macs...
You have to get in touch with your inner macaron
You have to become a macaron...
What flavor macaron would YOU be???

Party Sketcher

Becs said, How did you manage to land all these sweet gigs?

When you're known in the family as the "artist" it's a natural you'll end up doing caricatures at Sweet 16 Birthday parties. Better than baby sitting.

But I didn't know I was laying the groundwork for sketching chefs at fancy dos... Here's an invitation I did for a benefit party of Julia Child with Great Chefs held at restaurant March.

I proposed to FOOD ARTS MAGAZINE that I do some sketchbook pages for them at the Lyon Food Fair - also known as the Salon des Metiers de Bouche (meaning Salon of the Careers of the Mouth!) SIRA, It's an international catering, hotel and food trade exhibition held bi-annually in January.

The French take it so much further than the Fancy Food Show! With real fish mongers, crepe makers, cheese vendors - The WORKS!

I illustrated an invitation for D'Artagnan's big anniversary party at Grand Central station for Ariane Daguin. Sketching the party was part of the fun of photographing and attending these events.

After Paul Bocuse's M.O.F. party, George Duboeuf gave a bang-up chef soiree... More doodles.

Sketching at the James Beard Awards. Out of these party sketches I ended up doing a series of ads for Restaurant Associates showing the Tropica chef creating in the kitchen. I went in, taped his conversation and made it part of the ads seen inside New York Magazine too. Party sketching is a FUN career!

Shoe Designer...

 I like to throw in the odd picture of shoes here and there in a post.

The Paris METRO is always a good place to steal shoe shots.

Or just window shopping late at night...

 

I spotted a decorative Indian pillow case and decided it would make a good espadrille.When the orders piled in, the problem was where to find more of the same mirrored Indian pillowcases.

and designed a "Fred Astair" group.

The shoe company had offices in Florence (a palazzo on the Arno) and Alicante, Spain, so it was a constant diet of pasta, paella and shoes. Tough choices.

I'm still keeping my eyes open for new shoe trends and details. I spotted this sign in a Marais shoe shop last trip for "BRONX" shoes.

 Paris feet, at the 2006 art show in the Jardins du Luxembourg.

Six months later I met someone at the tennis club who asked me if I'd like to design shoes in Europe. Soon I was attending shoe shows in London, Paris, Bologna, always keeping my eyes open for new trends and details. I found a vintage man's oxford in London I used as inspiration. Part of the job description was keeping your eyes open at all times for new trends and details. A friend heard of a design job on the Bowery, so I ran to Pratt, to took a one-week pattern making course. This shoe put me on the front of Footwear News. I found an Indian embroidered pillowcase with mirrors 

And I'm not just talking chocolate shoes by Jean-Paul Hevin either.

Shooting The Chefs

More brilliant career history, since you loved the Bocuse story. I got involved with The James Beard House because I fell in love with fancy plating while at a French spa, Les Pres D'Eugenie les Bains. I took a cooking tour visiting New York's top restaurant kitchens when I returned.The leader suggested I volunteer at the James Beard House so I could learn to plate on the site.

This chef is 'plating' = creating beautiful plates for the diners. He is making sure every plate is perfect and delectable.That's how I joined the Beard House parsley chopping brigade.

The chefs perform in the kitchen like theater. They dance around like Baryshnikov, working in unison. I loved sketching them. But plating is HARD WORK, and first chance I got, I switched to shooting the chefs.

Watching the chefs move around is like being at a life drawing class... I was dying to draw them! As soon as I got home I'd start sketching and next day I'd shoot off my sketches via fax into the chef's kitchens.

I became the Toulouse Lautrec of the kitchen. I met every chef in the food world and I drew ✏️ them.

But painting those chefs caused me such weltschmerz /world-pain. Finally a week before the opening of portrait show I figured it out. I painted multiple drawings on a toned ground canvas like old master drawings. Plus I added their signatures for texture.

I loved painting chefs from the back especially...so much character is revealed from the back view.
I almost forgot. Part of the hard work of photographing the chefs dancing in the kitchen, was shooting these gorgeous plates. AND eating them. The top dish is a roasted peach filled with berries and ice cream. The bottom dish looks like fish + chips, but is really Rattlesnake + chips. All part of the job of shooting the chefs. More on my brilliant careers to come.