THE MICHENER SHOW...SOME THOUGHTS

COOKBOOK SHOW INTENTIONS

KIRBY FREDENDALL

2010

Foremost my work is about the layering of oil paint using the resulting abstract shapes to create an experience that engages the viewer on multiple levels. From a distance the images are abstractions. Flattened panels of color lay over understructures that may or may not reveal their organic curves. Color functions as a vehicle of expression both visually and emotionally. It functions to create space and movement. As the viewer moves closer they are drawn into the image, finding entry through areas of transparency and being denied entry by areas of opacity. Upon closer inspection the viewer begins to see spaces of light and dark that reveal shifting internal structures. Shapes that lie within the layers of paint begin to suggest dfferent things to different viewers. Some of these worlds that I create are easily accessible - some are nearly impossible much like the process of memory.

In the case of this show, I layer the abstract shapes and colors over cookbooks and booklets, ads, and other paper ehemera from the 30’s and 40’s. I have collected cookbooks for many years and have found them to be profoundly engaging sources of information about the women who used them...the roles these women played within their familiies, marriages, and in their larger historical and social surroundings. Having not lived through this era, I , as we all do when revisiting an earlier time, create for myself a version or image of these women’s roles that is formed from sources that are pushed back through time and covered by layers of years, obscured from our current reality.

So as the viewer sees these images from afar, they are abstractions. Shifting layers in various shapes of color and varying transparencies are meant to draw the viewer closer to the image. Closer inspection begins to reveal images, words, colors, and handwriting that speak out from the past through layers of time and memory.

THE JOY OF WOMANHOOD c 1950

In the words of Irma S. Rombauer "Serve hot food from hot dishes...keep calm even if your hair striggles and you drip unattractively.Brush up before serving..."

The Joy of Cooking c1953

COOKING WITH RATIONED FOOD

Good meals with wartime rations was the subject of the cook booklet that this piece has as it's background. All of the work to save food and supplies was a countrywide effort during WW 2. This piece reflects the unity that was created in a country at war by the contributions of every individual cook when it was time to prepare a meal with limited resources. Each state in the blue field is represented by an individual ration stamp.

LYDIA PINKHAMS MIRACLE TONIC

Lydia Pinkham made medicine for "nervous ladies." I have a little advertising pamphlet that tells about the miracle Lydia's tonic...everything that ailed the modern woman was addressed in this pamphlet. The stresses of raising children getting to you? Try a drop of the tonic. The stresses of "feminine problems" creating duress? Try Lydia's tonic. Any guesses as to what this miracle drug might have contained?
This piece is created with one of Lydia's advertising pamphlets. Pages of woes and testimonials are layered beneath thin washes of paint. Looking through the layers is looking back into time. The shapes suggest the faces of the women who made use of Lydia's miracle tonic.

ROSIE THE RIVETER

This lovely lady is Rosie the Riveter...the epitome of the 1940's woman...homemaker, mother, caregiver, wife, and wartime worker. This piece is constructed from a hair school mannequin that was styled by Susan Williams in a typical 1940's up do. Rosie is papered with 1003 Household Hints...she would have needed all of them to survive.

SERVICE WITHOUT SERVICE OF A MAID

These lovely ladies present a charming table setting with lovely centerpieces. What more could you ask of a woman? This was an era when families were losing their maids to other more profitable jobs and women were faced with serving the company without help. This piece is created from a page describing the perfect way to set out a table for company. The advice appeared in Good Meals And How To Prepare Them, c 1930's. The piece uses beeswax and oil paint.

WOMEN & COOKBOOKS: THE WORK

Cookbooks have been one of the dominant literary forms available written by and for women for years. The social and cultural expectations of the times in which these books were written influenced the tone of the writing and the recipes included within them. While history has changed the circumstances and influenced the lives of the cooks who referred to these manuals, ultimately, the gender of the family “cook” has remained the same. I have a photograph of my hands placed in a work smoothed, limestone bowl in front of a Pueblo Indian cliff dwelling. I remember crouching there, wondering what her hands looked like – the ones that worked the corn each day to meal in that bowl for the tortillas for her family. I have a cookbook from1882 entitled “Our Home Favorite” from the Young Women’s Home Mission Circle of the first Baptist Church in Saratoga Springs, New York. I have held its covers, thick with kitchen dirt, and wondered if Miss Edith Mills of 148 Church Street ever tried the Lemon Pie recipe. Her book’s version calls for lemon, sugar, water, flour, eggs, and cornstarch. Sixty three years later, Sarah Marshall of 807 Druid Avenue’s equally worn The Joy of Cooking has a recipe for lemon pie that calls for… lemon, sugar, water, flour, eggs, and cornstarch. Cooking was certainly expected of these three women, but was cooking a joy to them?

These images and objects utilize text and illustrations drawn from actual cookbooks. I have chosen roughly the decade of the 40’s, including late Depression era books through post WW2 books. These books were everyday objects found in women’s kitchens. Many of them were used into disrepair, with notations fading in the margins. Some looked as if an insurance agent had left them on the porch never to be read again. Either way, they were not “precious” antiques. They were held by actual people with actual lives living through life changing events. Many of them belonged to our parents or grandparents.

These images/assemblages are each my response to a particular book. Some of the images employ text and photographs buried within layers of wax and paint. They require the viewer to engage in a search. Visual openings provide spaces through which the viewer might look as if through time. The way in which we remember our history as humans changes and shifts through time as our lives change and as our need to place our past in a more comfortable light dictate. How we all remember a time past is truly a matter of personal interpretation.