meredith cutler :: artist :: designer ::

Since I'm currently in the wretched state of not being able to process food, I thought I'd torture myself by sharing a few new snapshots from my playing with food photo-documentary "roll" (no pun intended, I really would prefer the ability to consume something other than ginger ale and Saltines!)

Above (Top): "Concerned cutting board - Okra Masala"
Above (Bottom): "Miraculous steel-cut oatmeal heart"

Art has finally slept...I had to slow it down a bit this week, given that my domestic unit has obtained the mysterious, mid-spring flu (plague). After a solid week of summer weather (the devil's trickery), the sky transitioned to cold, miserable rain for two days straight. With it pounding on my skylight, I awoke early yesterday morning with my bones rattling with fever and the evil one climbing out of my stomach. (Sadly, because of "once sick, never again" rules, it will be a cold day in hell before I am able to enjoy my husband's mushroom risotto.)

The truly "sick" thing about a household stricken is the dilemma: who will care for the ill if all are indisposed? Maybe this guy can help, he seems to be parked on the emergency defibrillator...

Above: "Bunny": First Aid Station, East Side/Mt. Hope YMCA, Providence, RI

It has been a light week for writing, due to the fact that I have had family in town and therefore the rare chance to show people around Providence, which I still feel that I am getting to know myself as a relatively new Boston transplant.

Locals may have seen me dragging my eerily resemblant mother and aunt down Thayer and Benefit streets (note: the latter relative = me in 20 years, the former = me in 30 years), with a very unenthusiastic 11-year old cousin in tow. It isn't family day without a stop at the gift shop, so after a brief stint at the RISD Museum to skim the concise and impressive Styrofoam and Evo/Revo shows, we hit up RISD Works.

I wasn't planning on any purchases, but my intrepid mother scouted out the sole copy of Dirty Wow Wow and other love stories, by Cheryl and Jeffrey Katz. I had to treat myself to this sweet, little hard-cover book, which documents in neutral, portrait-style photography the well-loved, tattered and often humorously repaired softies and blankies of childhood in their "sunset years". With short, fable-like biographical essays accompanying each portrait, I find this collection in pleasing contrast to my "Lost and Found" cell-phone photo documentary series of abandoned softies.

Oh, and the dust-jacket cover art features the retro-pup "Le Mutt" (in this edition knighted "Rover" by his small person).

I was once the proud owner of both a "Le Mutt" and his paramour, "Fi-Fi La Femme" back in the good 'ol early 1980's. I recall that "Le Mutt" had a very weak ear, but that didn't stop me from spinning him by it like a windmill until it came off, catapulting the poor canine into outer space.

The city is a strange and often dangerous place to make a home, especially when pets and children are part of the equation. Still, there are advantages to keeping a domesticated animal in an urban environment...

Above: "Tiger" - Off Manhattan Ave., Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NY

Yesterday was the day of the amazing journey. I made my $28.84 way home (including gas) to Providence, from Williamsburg, via a snaking, pulsing and sometimes oozing network of mass-transit, adrenaline, fantastic timing and pure luck. I feel like Ferris Buehler.

I have to say my favorite part of the journey took place around Rockefeller Center, where I ran smack into the gooey center of a full-on Saint Patrick's Day parade. Che casino! How can it be that I am from Boston, yet totally blanked on Saint Patrick's Day until the beer breath of hundreds of thousands of green-hatted drunken revelers on W51st and 5th Avenue smacked me upside the head?

New York was a craic; I'm still downloading my mental notes on the shows I was able to breeze through between bars. But until then, as a tribute to my favorite art school professor inspired adjective of all time, behold:

See if you can guess what it is (hint: it's not hot).