An artist’s intent is arbitrary. What is legible to the audience?
Of the Three Sisters, the enlarged popcorn easily conveyed thousands of years of celebration embodied in the fireworks of tiny grains exploding into food.
Ying and yang were on my mind as I sculpted the squash and beans. The Three Sisters completed one another. Together they provide complete nutrition. They also protect one another in the garden.
But when we hung the beans, Chef Cordúa’s face lit up.
He called out to the forty folks hustling to open the restaurant, “Ha, look at Jordan’s Mexican Humping Beans !”
The beans were transformed. Now, some of the beans were coupling. Some were tired of coupling. Some were feeling experimental.
Everyone was smiling.
The Three Sisters did create bigger human populations. Beans are seeds…reproductive imagery suits them.
In an interview Margaret Atwood said, “…writing isn’t for the writer it’s for the reader….writers have an old convention, ”… go little book out into the world, here is your train ticket and here’s your lunch bucket: go out into the world – go out and make new friends,” because once you’ve finished something it’s not yours any more, it belongs to those who receives it…”
#sculpture #threesisters #publicart #restaurantdesign #theamericas #contemporaryarchitecture
Squash, the second of the three milpa sisters…
MILPAS
The three sisters were the heart of milpa gardens “…in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once including corn, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melons, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jicama, amaranth and mucuna…... Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary. Maize lacks the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which the body needs to make protiens and niacin; ... Beans have both lysine and tryptophan ... Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins, avocados have fats. The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, “is one of the most successful human inventions ever created.”
— Charles C. Mann, “1491: New Revelation of the Americas Before Columbus”
Popcorn, as American as it gets…
Chef Cordúa has an intimate relationship with three sisters,
The co-stars of gardens which transformed the Americas: Corn, Squash and Beans. Only ingredients indigenous to the New World are welcome in his kitchen.
Popcorn
Florence Fabricant of the New York Times wrote, “…Popcorn has existed in the Americas for thousands of years. Archeologists have determined that kernels found in a cave in New Mexico are 5,600 years old, and have also determined that popcorn was the earliest form of maize. Popcorn grains 1,000 years old found in Indian tombs in Peru can still be popped.
The best-known tidbit of popcorn history is probably that it was introduced to Europeans at the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, Mass. Quadequina, brother of Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag Indians, brought some popcorn for the colonists to try…”
MILPAS
The three sisters were the heart of milpa gardens “…in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once including corn, avocados, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melons, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jicama, amaranth and mucuna…... Milpa crops are nutritionally and environmentally complementary. Maize lacks the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which the body needs to make protiens and niacin; ... Beans have both lysine and tryptophan ... Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins, avocados have fats. The milpa, in the estimation of H. Garrison Wilkes, a maize researcher at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, “is one of the most successful human inventions ever created.”
— Charles C. Mann, “1491: New Revelation of the Americas Before Columbus”
#sculpture #restaurant design #theamericas #popcorn #milpas #indigenousfood #threesisters #art #experientaldesign
The façade of the third project with Chef Córdua,
tattooed in in bronzed steel
with images inspired by the enormous, and enormously mysterious, 2000 year old Peruvian Nazca Lines; by a ceremonial wedding vessel depicting a two headed llama; images of the Andes and the Amazon River; the flora + fauna of the new world and a dog from the old one…
#tattoos #contemporary facades #contemporarydesign #theandes #Nazcalines #restaurantdesign #finedining #houstonarchtiecturre
“I want a gringo fantasy of the Americas south of the US” said Chef Cordúa…together we read “1491” by Mann, about the pre-Columbian Américas in which…he described a thick leafy canopy allowing only trickles of light to illuminate jungles below….A pilot told me they employed the same protocols flying over the Pacific Ocean and the rain forest…Pencil sketches exploring how those trees might define spaces...
#sketches #1491 #magicalrealism #américas #contemporarydesign #narrativearchitecture #contemporaryart #contemporaryarchitecture #finedining
The Rasta Vase , inspired by the spirit and coiffure of Bob Marley…more at mozer.com
Chef Cordúa’s directive for the first of our collaborations was to build “a gringo’s dream of south + central America”.
Over dinner we chatted about “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, a seamless tapestry of Macando, a city wrought from the fecund Columbian jungle, a narrative woven from a warp of rational European reality + a weft of indigenous American magic...
#magicalrealism #immersiveexperience #immersivedesign #gabrielgarciamarques #américas #contemporarydesign #narrativearchitecture #contemporaryart #contemporaryarchitecture #finedining
Studies for the second Américas Restaurant:
Magical Realism + the Américas + Chef Michael Cordúa
It was my friend Michael Cordúa’s birthday last week. Thirty years ago we began a conversation about the Américas that have been on my mind…
Michael was born in Nicaragua. He invented his uniquely North American style in Houston, freely fusing Pan-American and European recipes strictly prepared with ingredients indigenous to the Americas…
The first meal he prepared for me looked like fettuccini and shrimp. The shrimp had been smoked with corn husks. The first forkful was at once delicious, familiar and foreign – it didn’t taste like fettuccini, it was a surreal experience... Chef Cordúa had cut fettuccini noodles from a corn tortilla– corn is indigenous to the Americas, the wheat used in Italian fettuccini is not…
We designed four restaurants with Michael. They were formed by our conversations and books we read together, which included Magical Realist pieces by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges.
The collaborations were Magical Realism to walk into, Magical Realism you could taste…
#magicalrealism #jorgeluisborges #gabrielgarciamarques #américas #contemporarydesign #narrativearchitecture #contemporaryart #contemporaryarchitecture #finedining
The first iteration of the Américas Rasta Lamps, enveloped in cowboy hat felt, inspired by Bob Marley's hairdo...
#cowboyhat #contemporarysculpture #contemporarydesign #contemporarylighting