Take a Walk Around Richmond, VA

Cognac ice cream with smoked sea salt chocolate, toasted pepitas and chewy caramel swirl.

Let’s hear from the artist:

“As the piano began, I envisioned rain tapping on a window; the droplets clinging to the glass, then converging, and trickling down in little streams. Then we hear this melancholy, almost mournful voice singing “when all of it’s burned up, down with the construct, these flowering seeds ain’t gonna need me.” Is it grief in her voice? Defiance? Acceptance? It made my mind wander and think about which “constructs” should come down, and which “seeds” – literally and figuratively – should grow and flourish. Every time I listened to the song, I heard something new or thought about it in a different way.

The ice cream is spiked with a little Cognac, which provides a similarly moody and mysterious backdrop. I interpreted the streaming rain into ripples of toasty, sweet caramel. The smoked sea salt chocolate echoes the “burned up” lyric and the “flowering seeds” became pepitas (pumpkin seeds); both of which contrast with the sweeter elements in the ice cream, like the contrast I felt between the major and minor chords in the song. I also wanted to challenge the common assumption (or construct) that ice cream is simply sweet, by balancing it with the salty, smoky, and bitter flavors in the other ingredients. Just as I kept listening to the song and thinking about it in new ways, I hope each bite of the ice cream will taste slightly different than the last, creating a melody of flavors that you keep coming back for.”

Let’s hear from the artist:

“I was so pleasantly surprised when I found out the art I’d be interpreting was an ice cream flavor. As a visual artist I admittedly sometimes forget to see culinary endeavors as a branch of an artistic practice, so I was excited to be reminded of just how much food can be art. This flavor felt like it was tailor made to me- combining the sweet and savory aspects of ice cream that I love. Sunflowers have such a distinct taste and place in one’s vision of summer- when paired with caramel and chocolate it created for me the perfect summation of my experience of Richmond summers.

As previously mentioned, sunflowers have such a distinct place in my vision of summer. I have grown them from seed in my front yard for the past two years. This element of the ice cream flavor really inspired me to create my photographic reaction- a visual interpretation of the nostalgia that comes at the end of the summer. Combining ephemera and objects I’ve collected over the years, alongside seeds I’ve collected from the sunflowers I’ve grown myself, Summer’s End depicts a figurative and literal box of memories- items that together paint a portrait of an unknown owner, their meaning left up to interpretation by the viewer, but their importance undeniable. I wanted to showcase a sense of warmth, but also a sense of impermanence, much like the lifespan of ice cream and summer itself.”

Let’s hear from the artist:

“I understood the photo I received to depict a sort of excavated time capsule, a portal into a unique piece of the past. The contents of the box — personal memories, special artifacts and cultural relics — have universal significances and purposes, but those beyond the obvious raised questions in me I ultimately kept suspended. Rather than parse out what particular function or resonance each item had in its past life, I interpreted the photo’s significance, generally, through the idea of ambiguity. The sheer sense of wonder — upon unpacking a variety of dated objects, untethered from context and collected into a specific, mysterious curation — was the engine for my poem.

Being that my medium is words, one method that has worked for my poetry is brainstorming all words, terms, phrases, expressions and ideas associated with a subject and then arranging, stylizing and revising the most promising ones into a proper poem. The visual anchor of the photo I inherited and its richness in detail lent me a reservoir of words and phrases from which to select and with which to compose my response. I recursively listed and mused on the objective details of the photo and their more subjective associations. My goal with ekphrastic responses like this one is always to somehow invigorate or complicate the visual. That being said, I decided that the “telephonic” concept behind the Consenses Walk project  — taking a week to think on and create based on a previous creator’s interpretation, then passing your interpretation on to the next creative respondent — merited maintaining most of the photo’s integrity in my poem, as opposed to filtering it through too dynamic of an interpretation. This approach also reflects my celebration of the photo’s “particular ambiguity” via descriptive-meditative writing. I hope that my more objective writing extends the legacy of the project at-large while my more subjective writing enhances the conversation in some refreshing way.”

Let’s hear from the artist:

“The poem described an old cigar box stashed in the corner of the home, filled with odds and ends.  Every individual item in the box was lovingly described in detail, even down to the smell.  It made me think about items in our home that we immortalize. I thought about the cigar box as a vessel to contain cherished objects and the memories associated with them. Even if their function is long gone, we cannot bear to get rid of them quite yet (whether for emotional or practical reasons).

I think of the cigar box as space for these items which are on the edge of existing – cherished and hoarded, but not actively used or acknowledged.

When I read this poem, I thought about the act of consolidating small pieces or particles together into a contained space that is safe and out of the way.  For some reason, I thought of accumulation and sweeping things into a corner.  (a corner being an unused space similar to a discarded cigar box)

My reaction piece is a glass pyramid form filled with the swept up dust and debris from the floor of my home and studio.  The vitrine form is intended to be displayed in the corner of a room on the ground, as if .  The dust looks gray and nondescript, but upon closer inspection a world emerges within the pieces of my life and home: leaves, skin, pollen, hair, crumbs, cat fur, nails, lint, a pine needle, a whisker, onion skin, bits of string, plastic tabs, a live ant, salt, plaster, dirt, etc.  The closer you look the more you see.  Similar to the poem, I intended for my sculpture to immortalize the small objects on the periphery of our existence that we rarely notice.”