Head in the Clouds: Cloudy TEA

 

It was my day off.  I was up at 7 AM.  My usual rising time for work is 5 AM.  I was in pj's, cup of "joe" in hand, checking my emails. Emergency email from Eunyoung.  "It's 80 degrees outside.  The cherry blossoms are going to open wide.  Must make tea today."  It was my first  cherry blossom alert.

We do strange and wonderful things on Randall's Island.  It's part of the charm of my job.  On April 20th, we are holding our first Cherry Blossom Festival at  Randall's Island Urban Farm.  Shino Tanaka, will demonstrate how to make cherry blossom salt and tea.  Cherry Blossom Tea is a fermentation process.  The cherry blossoms are mixed with salt and plum vinegar and over the course of a week, ferment and become drinkable as a tea or decoration.

Using green tea,  float one cherry blossom in your cup.  The flower opens.  Inpatient, I tried it right away.  I did not taste anything, except the flavor of tea.  5 minutes later another sip.  Salty, very salty.  5 minutes later, the taste of the cherry blossom.  

evening temple bell

stopped in the sky

by the cherry blossom

Chiyo-nii

CHERRY BLOSSOM
SALT RECIPE

Ingredients:
Double Cherry Blossoms (Kwanzan Cherry Blossoms), coarse salt and plum or white wine vinegar.

Directions:
1. Gather cherry blossoms when the flowers are 70-80% open.

2.  Rinse blossoms with water very lightly and drain blossoms in a flat basket.

3.  Drain the excess water from the blossoms and mix until the salt has been evenly distributed.

4.  Transfer the blossoms to a bowl.

5. Sprinkle coarse salt over the blossoms and mix until the salt has been evenly distributed.

6.  Take a clean plastic container, line the container with plastic wrap.

7.  Transfer the salted blossoms to the container.

8.  Seal the container tightly with an air-tight lid.

9.  Place a heavy object on the top of the lid.  This will help with the fermentation process.

10.  Leave the blossoms with the weight in the container for 24 hours.

11.  The following day, remove the blossoms from the container.

12.  Put the blossoms on paper towel and gently tap the excess water from the blossoms.

13.  After removing the excess water, place the blossoms back in the same container with lid.

14.  Pour white vinegar or plum vinegar over the blossoms from the container.

15.  Seal the container with plastic wrap before you put the lid back on.  No weighted object is necessary for the lid.

16.  After one week, remove the blossoms from the container.

17.  Line the flat basket with paper towels and place the blossoms in the flat basket.

18.  Dry the blossoms in a dark area for 2-3 days.

19.  If the paper towel is wet, change the wet towel to a new one and put the blossoms back in a dark area.

20.  Lightly mix the pickled blossoms in a bowl with coarse salt.

21.  Keep in the closed glass jar until you want to use the salt.*

*Blossoms can be stored up to one year.

*The blossoms can be used to decorate rice cakes and cookies, as well as black or green tea.

The Good, The Bad and The ArtFULL

FRIEZE ART FAIR
 

Randall's Island

Some people said the tent was amazing, some the art.  I found the mix of people most arresting.  Instead of bumping arms with hermes bags, converse sneakers outnumbered anything designer .  Sipping coffee, drinking wine, munching on croissants, eating pizza, guzzling beer, pushing baby carriages, chatting with friends and talking about art was the Frieze vibe.

I  watched the tent go up.  I knew it was 3 football fields long, still I could not feel the vastness of it until inside.  Walking to the end of one aisle was a work out in itself and then it was time to turnaround and head back down in the another endless direction.

Even though I think the whole book thing is dead, not at Frieze.   Art books of popular and little known publishers, plus limited editions were selling.

And of course there was the people watching

At Frieze, no one spoke in a a hushed tone.  More state fair than art fair, Frieze was a New York moment; as vibrant as a city sidewalk at rush hour.  Maybe this is the way ART is meant to be experienced.

Fence Embroidery: Katherine Daniels

 
Randall's Island Flow.11
KATHERINE DANIELS

I am surrounded by chain link fences. They enclose the ball fields and soccer fields on Randall's Island.  I have tried to like them, but haven't found a way to wrap my head around their utilitarian purpose.  Katherine Daniels changed my mind.  She is the first of five artists to install an environmental art piece on Randall's Island.  

The design for the fence is reminiscent of Native American art... in pottery, rugs and baskets.  I asked Katherine about the inspiration for her design.  " I always research the place I am asked to make an artwork for.  I found that the Carnasie Indians originally settled in Manhattan and since Randall's Island is part of Manhattan, I decided that basing my work on these geometric patterns would be appropriate to the site."

"Carnasie" is a phonetic interpretation of a word in the lenape language for "fenced land" or "fort."  The Native Americans who made the infamous sale of the island of Manhattan for 60 guilders were Lenape.   Europeans would often refer to the indigenous people living in an area by the local place-name, so reference may be found in contemporary documents to "Cararsee Indians." - Wikipedia

From Katherine Daniels website

Artist's Statement

"Outrageous elegance", a Buddhist concept, describes a manner that is approachable by being neither too cold (elegance alone).  This term is an apt description of the beauty, joy, humor and absurdity I strive for in my art.  I am interested in grand visual and physical forms that introduce and induce awe and wonder.  I make opulent abstract gardens that invoke a spirit and paradise.  I have been beading organic abstractions that descend from the ceiling or ascend walls.  They reference a mix of ornamental styles such as quilts from my Appalachian roots, the art of interior surfaces like rugs, Islamic and Asian textiles and screens, as well as environments that inspire awe such as the Sistine Chapel and the gardens at Versaille.  My work induces pleasure by unabashedly embracing abstract ornament.

Her work has unabashedly changed the way I view a chain link fence.

http://www.katherinedaniels.com

Does Height Matter?

Maybe, it does.

I was asked to remove 400 juniperus conferta 'blue pacific' planted at ground level, from a 50 ft. diameter circle, increase the height of the mound to two and half feet and put back the 500 junipers.

My initial reaction: one of the more boring pedestrian tasks.

And it was. The actual doing of the project was uninspired drudgery.

Surprisingly, the result was not.

I have held tight to the position that landscape architects and garden designers, who change existing topography do so, because they were self-indulgent narcissists: bending nature to their will.

Changing the topography of this mediocre planting did make a difference,
a significant difference.

This was the situation:

• gas station plants
• traffic circle in front of a prefab building
• existing soil more rock than earth.

A little bit of grade turned a inferior design into something slightly better.

And slightly better turned my mind to those famous practitioners, who exploited sloped topography: the Italians of the 16th century, especially Vignola at Villa Lante. This guy knew the secret of using what you have to create scale, perspective and symbolism.

When I thought about the Villa Lante and all those gardens throughout Italy that are built on hillsides, I knew that the innocuous traffic circle owed a debt to something much greater. Elizabeth Barlow Rogers in her essay about "Garden as Theater," says... the topography throughout much of Italy is hilly, thereby promoting greater opportunity visually for spatial enclosure than for spatial extension."

I am not certain that the designer of this prosaic, second-rate planting ever considered the importance of topographical features in the landscape: the fact is I learned an important lesson.

No matter its origins, in this little circle height does matter.