Janel Gradowski's Blog, page 14

The Inspiring Art of Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.

Last weekend I had the pleasure to attend the Kerrytown Bookfest in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The festival was a lovely celebration of books. There were many authors selling and signing books along with speaking on informational panels, but there were also bookbinders, paper makers and small presses that produce lovely, small print run works of art.

One of the busiest areas at the festival was around the tables that allowed visitors to actually letterpress print mementos of the event for free. While I was waiting for my turn to print an “I Love Books” card (pictured above) I began looking through the piles of posters sitting on the table. These are the two I chose:

I was delighted to see the man who helped me make my card signed both of the prints. I didn’t know who he was at the time, but I couldn’t wait to get home and search for his name on the internet. The personable artist turned out to be Amos Paul Kennedy Jr., a man who gave up his comfortable middle-class life, when he was 40-years old, to become a letterpress printer. Although he is from Alabama, he’s now in Detroit working at setting up The Detroit Printing Plant.

What a wonderful, inspiring man. I am so honored to own some of his prints. Proceed and Be Bold! (don’t you just love that phrase?!?) is his website. If you are interested in finding out more about Amos, his art or letterpress printing be sure to watch the documentary on the site. It’s fascinating.

Taking A Different Approach

This is how most dogs search for minnows and other underwater treasures.

This is how Cooper does it.

I always call Cooper my writing companion. Now I’m taking life cues from him. Sometimes you need to take a different approach.

Summer brought about the usual sporadic blogging and social media contact that I’ve come to expect from the season. I’m a mom and a writer, but the scale tips heavily toward the mom side when the kids are home 24/7, as it should. I didn’t write a lot of new material, but I read many books on writing with subjects ranging from how to plot a novel to handling negative reviews. As often happens, all of the new knowledge bits collided and mingled to form something different and exciting.

Today was the first day of school for my kids. My outlook is shiny and new too, just like the school year. I’m going to take Cooper’s lead and do things differently. How can you know what works best if you don’t try new things? Have you decided to try anything new recently?

Back To School Countdown

It’s almost that glorious time when my kids go back to school and I can get back to a writing schedule. I have been writing over the summer, but in the expected bits and spurts that come from having a house full of people and no schedules. Word counts haven’t been high, but my creative well is full. I’ve met interesting people, observed some unusual physical characteristics and experienced several spectacular storms. Lots of material is rattling around in my brain, waiting to be reincarnated in a story.

To prepare for the writing rush I always experience when my kids return to school, I’m reading. Topping off those creative reserves and trying to make my life a little easier. Some of the books are new to me, while others I have read before and found them very inspiring. If you’re interested, here are my current “night stand” books. Click on the covers to be taken to Amazon to learn more about each book.

The Care and Feeding Of The Girls In The Basement by Barbara Samuel. Barbara is one of my favorite authors. In this book she talks about life as a writer and gives advice to writers based on her experience.

The Lost Art of Mixing by Erica Bauermeister. This is the follow up to one of my favorite books of 2010, The School of Essential Ingredients. The book is a wonderful example of culinary fiction with an intriguing cast of characters.

Fix, Freeze, Feast by Kati Neville and Lindsay Tkacsik. I can’t count the number of times I’ve written all day and realized when I was picking the kids up from school that I had no idea what I wanted to make for dinner. I’m hoping to have at least a few meals stashed in my freezer by using this book. That should make life easier!

And Then Mother Nature Said, “Bam!”

A very common piece of advice for writers is: Write what you know. Apparently the writing muses are telling me to write about storms. Last month we had a nasty storm pass through that left our yard filled with broken branches, our neighbors’ tree uprooted, the electricity out and similar damage to many other houses in the area.

Last night a line of thunderstorms passed through and the tree in our backyard got struck by lightning!

Around 5:30 a.m. the whole house lit up with white light from the strike while it sounded like something had exploded in the back yard. Of course our lights went out, then came back on. Well, some of them came back on. It took an electrician quite a few hours to sort that out. My family and I are all fine, but all of our phones and the garage door opener are toast.

The tree roots went underneath our dog kennel (Cooper was safely inside!). As you can see, one of the cement paver bricks that make up the kennel floor exploded with chunks ending up at least 20 feet away. There are bits of bark that exploded from the tree all over the yard too. The power from that one bolt of lightning was amazingly scary. So if you hear a thunderstorm approaching please take cover – and not under a tree!

Food Court Wars Was Here…I Know Her!

Last night was the premier of the Food Court Wars episode, on The Food Network, that was filmed in my hometown of Midland, Michigan. For those of you who have never seen the show, each week two teams battle to win a one-year lease for a restaurant space in a mall food court. Of course there are challenges, along with coaching sessions from host Tyler Florence. In the end, the teams open up their concept restaurants in the food court for a day. Whoever makes the most money wins the episode and the coveted lease.

Source

I knew from Facebook posts by a local restaurant that the show was coming to the Midland Mall, but I didn’t realize exactly when. So unfortunately I didn’t make it to the mall on the days the contestants were competing. When the first episode of Food Court Wars aired the Midland Farmer’s Market began posting on Facebook that one of their vendors would be competing on the Midland Mall episode. That vendor was Melania Paser (in the blue skirt above) from The Pie’d Piper. I’ve been buying her delicious pies, treats and hot pepper jelly at local farmer’s markets for several years. I love stopping to talk with her and to see what kind of interesting pie flavors she’s offering like Fuzzy Navel or BlueBarb (blueberry/rhubarb). My husband prefers her spicy pie creations like apple with Red Hots candy and a mixed berry spiced with chile peppers. The tangy, sweet and spicy pepper jelly she offers is fabulous on sandwiches, especially BLTs. By the way, if you watched the show, the Chicken Shawarma prepared without the time constraints and pressure of the show is fabulous and very tasty.

The very first time I met Melania she was wearing a brightly colored dress and a headband with a tiny, Pied Piper style hat on it. As a writer I love observing people, collecting in my mind bits of interesting personalities and physical traits to use as inspiration for my writing. That little hat caught the attention of my writer side, but her warm personality is one of the reasons going to the farmer’s market is so much fun for me. I hope the brush with Food Network fame gives her career a huge boost!

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads.

A Fan Of Dead People

Rivera Court

Are you a fan of any dead people? I’m not talking about ghosts and zombies. I mean people like actors, artists and writers who are no longer with us, but you still admire their work. People like Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Picasso, Laura Ingalls Wilder, etc. Last week I got to have a fan girl experience with some artists that passed away long before I was born and I loved it!

Rivera’s Self-Portrait Within The Mural

My family and I visited the Detroit Institute of Arts. While there is art from many fascinating artists, but by far my favorite area was Rivera Court. It is a two-story tall room filled with the Detroit Industry fresco created by famed Mexican artist, Diego Rivera. The mural was spectacular and I could have spent hours looking at it. Rivera believed that art should be displayed in public places, instead of kept in the homes of the rich. He was a very controversial artist in his time and some of his murals were even removed in places like New York City, as he often used his murals as a sort of protest against what he thought was wrong with the world. There were people that wanted the murals removed from DIA, but thankfully they have remained.

Assembly Line

Engine That Resembles An Aztec Dog Effigy

Another Scene From An Auto Assembly Line

I have admired Rivera’s art for many years, but I wouldn’t have learned about him if I hadn’t become a fan of his wife first. Frida Kahlo’s popularity has soared in recent years. Images of her,  the iconic braids and uni-brow eyebrows make her instantly recognizable, can be found on everything from postcards to paper dolls. That wasn’t the case 25 years ago when I saw a documentary on her and was fascinated by her life and passion for living. Many of her paintings are self-portraits and she used them as a sort of healing journal to cope with things like miscarriages and debilitating surgeries following an almost fatal accident when she was a teen. Some of the images are raw and disturbing, but so are the ordeals that inspired her to paint them.

A Small, Upper Panel

Rivera often included images of famous people in his frescoes, including himself and Frida. While she isn’t in the mural in Detroit, he is. Even though Frida was not depicted on the walls of the room I swear I could feel her presence. She and Diego spent a year in Detroit as he painted. I’m sure she spent a lot of time in that room while he worked and I swear I could feel both of their spirits still present in the court. That sounds rather new age woo-woo, but I don’t know how else to explain it. Standing in the sun-filled room, knowing that I was standing on the same ground that they stood on at one time, was in a word…amazing.

Baby In The Roots Of A Plant

In 2015 the DIA will be doing a huge exhibit of both Diego and Frida’s work. One article I read said the curator was trying to set it up so every piece of artwork Frida did will be on display. I will absolutely be visiting the art institute then, but I would like to go back before that time, too. The place is full of creative spirits or at least the spirit of creativity.

Inspiration In Bourdain

Raise your hand if you’re an Anthony Bourdain fan. If I am channel surfing on the television, it’s a pretty sure bet that I’ll stop on one of his shows if I spot it. No Reservations is his longest running series, but there is also The Layover and now Parts Unknown. By chance I ran across Parts Unknown a few weeks ago and I was instantly hooked. Classic, tell-it-like-it-really-is Bourdain, without all of the explicit language beeps on The Travel Channel shows.

You see, I find Mr. Bourdain inspiring. Yes, he is the poster child of bad boys, handsomely gaunt with a tumultuous past and acerbic wit. I’m sure many fellow writers have used him as inspiration for a character. The thing that draws me to his TV shows, though, is the other people. He has conversations with chefs and that is the key. He interacts. His literary background is apparent in every episode. He doesn’t dance on the pretty surface. He provides backstory and social commentary.

How many shows have you watched that are the equivalent of chef eye candy? The chef is introduced, maybe a few words are said about his/her background and then the show moves on to preparing recipes. Sure, as a writer you can pick up physical details for characters, maybe find some inspiration for recipes if you write books that include recipes like I do. But appearance is only part of a literary character. I actually tend to be quite vague about character descriptions, preferring to let the reader “do the work” and produce their own, unique version of my character in their minds. Bourdain’s shows are a mine of character personality traits. The eccentric chef who puts his restaurant in a hard to reach spot, so only the diners who really want to eat his food come. The community activist who trains impoverished youths to work in restaurants. The matriarch living in a remote village who pulls together a meal from the resources outside her door. Those are the types of stories I like to interweave into my own fictional stories.



Are you a Bourdain fan? What do you find appealing, or unappealing, about him?

Creative Recharge

Sometimes it feels like the universe is working against you and sometimes the universe hands you a big, juicy helping of creative inspiration.

For the last two weeks I’ve felt like the universe has had a vendetta against my writing. So. Many. Distractions. This morning, the beginning of a new week, I woke up and realized I’ve actually been filling my creative “well” with images and stories that I can draw from when I write.

The man with symmetrical, matching tattoos on his forearms and calves interspersed with more random tattoos. What is the significance of the matching ones? The older woman who spends hours sitting on a towel on the end of the dock, whether it’s cold and windy or unbearably hot and sunny. Does the sun, the water or something else draw her out every day? Nik Wallenda walking on the “skywire” across the Grand Canyon. Is there some kind of genetic mutation that has driven seven generations of his family to risk their lives walking on tightropes? Spotting the first fireflies of summer cavorting outside my bedroom window last night. How amazing is it that a mere bug can produce light from within its body? Having a cherry tree filled with a bumper crop over the weekend and waking this morning to find all of the cherries gone. How many birds and squirrels did it take to eat all of that fruit so quickly?

Those are just some of the things that have landed in my mind over the last few weeks. Which ones will appear in future stories and which ones will ripen and turn into something new? I’m not sure, but that’s all part of the fun of being creative, isn’t it?



Have you found anything that has recharged your creativity recently?

Splash, Zoom…O.P.A.!

Last week was the first full week of summer vacation for my kids and my husband had the week off from work too.  There’s nothing like starting the summer, which always disorients me and my writing, with a bang. While I flounder around trying to come up with a new writing and blogging routine I thought I’d share some photos of how we ended our vacation – The Heritage Coast Grand Prix (Tawas, MI) put on by the Offshore Powerboat Association. These pictures are from practice and the block party. We had other plans for Sunday, so unfortunately we didn’t get to see the races. Still it’s great fun to watch the boats flying past the pier and then check them out up close in the evening.

What have you done so far this summer?

Sand Sculpture

In The Pits

Trailer That Turns A Boat Into A Billboard!

A Crane Is Used To Launch Some Of The Boats

Getting Ready

Up To Speed

Driver Autographs At The Block Party

Cupcakes, Lemonade and Summer Time

I can’t believe the end of the school year is here. Three more days for my kids. They’re both happy and busy. And I’m the same way. I’ve been busy getting some “things” in place with my books and writing. I’m looking forward to spending time with my family, but I’m feeling a bit scrambled right now. It seems that we’re always doing something in the summer. Because we are busy it feels like I am often squeezing things in. Quick and easy is the theme of summer for me.

Last weekend, when I found out that I needed to bring a dish to a picnic I decided a dessert would be good, particularly cake.  Keeping hot food hot and cold food cold is always a challenge at potlucks. No reason to worry about that with cake! To keep with my quick and easy summer credo, I started consulting my collection of Cake Mix Doctor (by Anne Byrn) cookbooks. Yes, made from scratch cakes are best, but the author has some great ideas to dress up time saving mixes. There is also advice on choosing the right cake mix for a recipe, substitutions and tips for working with mixes in all of her books. I settled on a recipe from Cupcakes from the Cake Mix Doctor: Lemonade Angel Cakes.

Not only were they delicious, they were also easy and inexpensive. After reading through the recipe I had expected a subtle lemon flavor, but I was pleasantly surprised at how lemony they turned out to be. Combine the refreshing lemon with a light cake texture and they were heavenly! My daughter proclaimed that we would have to make them again soon. I topped them with a whipped frosting from a can, because I was again afraid the recommended lemon cream cheese icing wouldn’t hold up well in warm weather. Honestly, I liked the cupcakes better without the icing.

I really like this recipe as it is, but I can’t help but think there are many ways it could be changed and customized. Sounds like some experiments are in order this summer. Until I come up with my own version of this recipe, I thought I’d share the original one.

Print
Lemonade Angel Cakes


Author: By Anne Byrn



Serves: 22-24 cupcakes
 

This recipe is from “Cupcakes! From The Cake Mix Doctor” by Anne Byrn

Ingredients

1 – 16 oz. package angel food cake mix
¾ cup water
½ cup thawed, frozen lemonade concentrate
24 paper cupcake liners




Instructions

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 24 cupcakes cups with the liners and set aside.
Place the cake mix, water and lemonade concentrate in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Stop and scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula. Increase mixer speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes, scraping down sides again if needed. The batter should look thick and well combined. Spoon ⅓ cup batter into each lined cupcake cup, filling it ¾ full. Remove any unused liners (makes 22-24 cupcakes). Place the pans in the oven.
Bake the cupcakes until they are golden and spring back when lightly pressed with your finger, 20-22 minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes. Remove cupcakes from pan and continue to let them cool on wire racks, at least 15 minutes before frosting.
Can be stored at room temperature for up to 3 days or in the refrigerator for 1 week.



3.2.1230

This post is linked to Weekend Cooking at Beth Fish Reads