Saturday. Oh, and Dean Foods

Well, I had a morning of shopping, for Second Seating, of course. Began the morning by picking up another tub of oyster shells (They are still smelling up the back of my car. I must get out there and deal with them.). Then dashed over to Michael's for more embroidery floss, so I can stitch together pieces of another wall hanging. Stopped by Bering's for some free coffee and plate holders for all these plates I've been writing on and baking.
Then I couldn't help myself. I stopped by the Guild Shop and found ever more plates to write on as well as another old metal top-of-the-stove coffee pot and a tray with hand painted roses.

Remember those two French style chairs that I forgot to purchase in a timely way for the Bayou, Bay, Beach tableau, when I first saw them months ago at Corporate Outfitters? Of course, they were sold when I finally returned for them, and so I've spent time this week looking for replacements. Here's a potential replacement. I am sure the right ones will turn up if they are truly necessary.
In the meantime, I stopped at Reeve's Antiques this afternoon, and lo and behold, at the end of a long corridor of furniture stood a small French sort of chair with needle point sunflowers. Well, that chair was a must have at any price. Sunflowers have been the management district's icon ever since we published the East End Strategic Vision and we had that big luncheon at UH to introduce 'our vision and goals' in September 2006. Does this sound like I still take ownership of projects and programs of the Greater East End District, even though I haven't drawn a salary in two years? Can't help it.

So now I have a delicate and comfortable little chair covered with sunflowers. Of course, it's going into Second Seating. Though probably not in the Bayou, Bay, Beach tableau. I am still looking for tattered little French chairs. The sunflower chair is, by the way, an American chair from the Northeast. Perhaps from the 1920s?
This afternoon, I invited a friend over just to see and listen to all the things that are happening to make this show a reality. I simply needed to reiterate all the tasks undertaken of late.
This past week has been a somewhat lost one as far as I am concerned. July is supposed to be about getting the facility itself ready. I was supposed to hear about the permitting process and I was supposed to get a bid for installing some sheet rock in the space.
Irma has to clear the place out, the roof needs repair and I need to get a crew in to clean and power wash before the sheetrock work and the final electrical work must be installed for the chandeliers.
So, all that being said, I need to take a Tylenol or two aspirin and get myself on the walk that I didn't take this morning and then on to some collage work out in the studio. First, a detour to the trunk of the car with a colander and a pot so I can get those oyster shells laid out in back to be cleaned and bleached by natural means.
By the way, I read an article today written by Ari LeVaux about Dean Foods, the company that owns the Oak Farm Dairy plant here in the East End. I'd wanted to make an Oak Farm Dairy milk carton chandelier because this plant processes all the milk used by the Houston Independent School District and the Cy Fair District. It's a major East End plant. But now, I think that perhaps it's a good thing that Dean Foods is not sponsoring a chandelier for Second Seating. LeVaux talks about Dean Foods taking over Silk, originally an organic soy milk product made with American organic soy beans. Dean Foods proceeded to dump American organic farmers in favor of buying cheaper Chinese soy beans for Silk. Another example of an organic food business being taken over by agribusiness and then, simply not supported, even when it's clear that Americans are willing to pay more for 'real' organic foodstuffs.
I quote from the article, "When mega corporation Dean Foods acquired Silk soy milk the prospects looked good for American organic soy farmers. Silk had always been committed to supporting domestic organic farmers, and with the new might of Dean Foods behind it, Silk would likely grow. Silk did grow, but it also dropped its commitment to domestic soy.
"Multiple Midwestern farmers and farmers cooperatives in the heart of American soy country were told by Silk they had to match the rock-bottom cost of Chinese organic soybeans -- a price they simply could not meet. Organic agriculture is labor-intensive, and China's edge comes largely from its abundance of cheap labor...
"Dean Foods had the opportunity to push organic and sustainable agriculture to incredible heights of production by working with North American farmers and traders to get more land in organic production," says Merle Kramer, a marketer for the Midwestern Organic Farmers Cooperative, based in Michigan. "But what they did was pit cheap foreign soybeans against the U.S. organic farmer, taking away any attraction for conventional farmers to make the move into sustainable agriculture."
"Silk bought Chinese soybeans for years, building a commanding share of the soy milk market, before substantially decreasing its support of organic agriculture altogether.
"Few Silk products are certified organic anymore, and some are processed with hexane, a neurotoxin. The use of hexane poses risks to workers in the plants and possibly the consumers of the product and is listed as an air pollutant by EPA. In Illinois alone, 5 million pounds of hexane are released into the environment by food processors Bunge, Cargill and Arthur Daniels Midland."So, I guess I will stop looking for vintage milk pitchers and just let that milk carton project fade away. I'll get on with the feral parrot pinata chandeliers instead. For whatever it's worth.

Cakes, Underwriters and Chandeliers Make Such a Good Day

Monday seemed a charmed day. It's now almost 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning and I have no business being awake, but here I am with my lap top ready to recount just how good a day Monday was.
Headed out of the house at 10:00 a.m. to pick up a bag of 1/2 pint Oak Farm Dairy milk cartons for a chandelier. I very recently learned from Gordon Harris that their East End plant over on Leeland supplies all the milk for both the Houston Independent School District and Cy-Fair School District. HISD, being the largest district in the State of Texas, must use millions of 1/2 pint cartons of milk. Who knew that the East End is a school milk supplier? I've seen the plant for years and talked to Gordon Harris for years, but have so recently learned exactly what they do. That's the beauty of working on Second Seating - it's art and it's also a kind of narrative about this industrial community of ours.

From Oak Farms, I drove on over to Houston Community College Southeast to drop off envelopes for some of June Woest's students who filigreed a dozen more Clorox bottles so I'd have enough to assemble the chandelier. There are some wonderful patterns on this final batch. Carmella Rojas made four of the dozen and they are beautiful.

From HCCS, I decided to get breakfast at La Victoria Bakery and while the migas a la Mexicana were cooking, I went back to the office to talk to Sandra and Marcella. For months, I intended to ask if they'd create a multi-tiered fantasy cake for the Second Seating banquet table. Rosi creates beautiful, baroque and bizarre cakes and one of her cakes should tower over the banquet table. They loved the idea and see July as the 'slow' month when they can construct this cake built of Styrofoam layers encrusted with whatever Rosie and Sandra dream up.

Then I mentioned the intricate beaded flowers that their mother Maria makes. I've pictured those beaded flowers on a Second Seating chandelier for a long time. 'Why couldn't be encrust a chandelier with your mother's beaded flowers?' I asked. That idea was well received too. So someday soon, they'll go through all the flowers and bouquets Maria's assembled and we'll see what sort of chandelier we can dream up. And yes, while we talked, I ate my plate of migas with refried beans and corn tortillas with half cup of coffee.


Home to check emails and found one from a Chronicle writer who'll do a story for the ALF dinner honorees. I am so happy. One of my extracurricular responsibilities is at last falling into place. It's that extra layer of work that often tips me over the edge so I am more than pleased that we'll have something in the neighborhood papers.

I headed back over to HCCS for a 2:30 appointment with their president, Irene Porcarella, which turned into a wonderful hour of free flowing ideas about how HCCS can integrate Second Seating into their 'green initiative.' I now have another underwriter for the installation and Irene and I will work on a series of activities that will both help Second Seating and involve the college. I am thrilled to have HCCS on board. More to talk about here as our ideas take form. What a good meeting. I've known Irene for years as she's held one job after another in the HCCS system. Good for her that she's now president of this HCCS campus with 10,000 students. It's grown so from the early days in the mid-1990s when the campus was new. There were 3000 students and the Felix Morales Building stood alone. What a difference a decade makes.

Dashed home again to check emails and make phone calls (OK, I know that when I have an iPhone I won't have to dash home, ever. I'll be picking up messages and sending messages from the front seat of my car or in the hallway of the place where I've just had a meeting.).
Made an appointment to meet with Jesse Sifunetes on Tuesday at 1:00. So need to catch up with him so we can talk through the final design of the coffee table with its mosaic of mugs. And his plans for firing dinner plates with East End motifs - magnolias, trains, fountains, ships, coffee cups. Lots to talk about, plans to make.
At 4:00 p.m., I drove cross town to the chandelier shop to see Tony Meija and two fine chandeliers finished and ready to be encrusted with 'stuff.' The Clorox chandelier with the mirrored ball looks great and on Thursday, I'll hang the Clorox bottles rolled on white tablecloths and we'll see it all for the first time. He's also completed the 3-hoop chandelier structure. Looks so good I hate to cover it with all the paraphernalia I'd planned. We loaded it in the back seat of my car and I know that I'll have a really fun project in my studio loading it with bias strips of fabric, crystals and random objects that could include tea cups, flowers, feathered birds, paper mache cupcakes, heaven knows what.

Next, we played with the design of the Dynamo soccer ball chandelier, using a cardboard box as its center, positioning the metal spokes that will hold the balls in the sides of the box. The thing is going to work. Wish I'd had my camera to take one of those 'process' pictures, so we'll remember how this thing came together. Tony Meija can visualize and his ideas are good. Each of these chandeliers has really been very carefully thought out. Can hardly wait to see them finished and in Irma's space.

My car is now totally engulfed with Second Seating stuff. The new 3-hoop chandelier fills the entire back seat and in the very back there is a lot more. I have two bags of metal shavings and curlicues from the dumpster at French's Grinding Service over on Polk St. Those curlicues will transform themselves into a 'bewitched birds nest' chandelier once I find the right base. Also in the back are two bags of fishing nets that Trudy found for me in Rockport for the 'Bayou, Bay...' table. I really do need to stop at Jim Goode's Seafood and ask for bags of oyster shells so I can set them out in my back garden for the bugs to pick clean. Get them ready to use with the nets as a table base.
From the chandelier shop, I went to Whole Foods to stock my pantry and refrigerator and then still felt so good about the day that I called my brother and said I'd bring some things over for supper at his house.Well, we sat at the table with smoke trout and crackers, sweet pickled peppers and chicken salad and suddenly, my eyes were very heavy lidded. Couldn't hold them open, left the table and was sound asleep on their living room couch in seconds. Must have slept an hour before I roused myself.
I suppose I could have slept there the better part of the night, but I rallied and drove home to a darkened house. Read a little of the Sunday NYT and fell into bed. And now awake again so soon - with another busy day ahead. Not the best.
You just never know about illusive sleep or just when you'll have an absolutely great day like Monday.

The Real Houston

'Seeing the East End for the first time again' is an old article written by Houston Business Journal's Bill Schadewald that really identifies some of the character of this oldest part of Houston. I remember reading the piece when it was originally published in 2000. Just came across it again when I Googled for East End coffee processing in an effort to get some up-to-date facts and figures on one of our neighborhood's major industries.
I like Schadewald's last sentence, "Economic conditions may ebb and flow, but the East End will always be one of the first places to go to find the real Houston."
That statement certainly contains one of the inspirations for 'Second Seating.' Too few people know where Houston's heart lives. Maybe a group of artists and East End businesses can change that lapse of knowledge. We're working on it.

Reflections on Second Seating, The Blog

What was I thinking as I wrote yesterday’s post? The words seem formal, giving information, yet holding back the names of the artists that I’ll be working with as well as the East End companies that will, with luck, support the making of fantasy table dinner tables that incorporate their brand, be it coffee, milk or cake. As I said, in time all will unfold. The first post was an attempt to give a ‘word picture’ of what is essentially, at this moment, a concept. There is so much more inside my head - images and bits of text, potential donors, promotional ideas, contact lists.

There is a whole lot outside of my head too that includes a growing cache of random dinner plates from garage sales, tables and funky chairs from resale shops, blue wine bottles, coffee mugs, a stack of twenty white tablecloths from a friend in Minnesota, candelabra, varied vases and bowls and an expanding trove of photographs that hint of things to come. I am seeing great swaths of tablecloths hung across the ceiling, reflecting projected images of dinner past. I see enormous chandeliers made from dozens of tin and aluminum cans, shells and broken pottery.

I’ve been mulling ideas for this installation for almost a year now. I am no longer sure of just how or when the original spark of an idea occurred, though my original word document on the subject is dated November 30, 2007 and is overrun with stream of consciousness verbiage that, upon rereading, now simply adds more ideas to my mental file cabinet.

Suffice it to say that on this bright morning that calls to me, “Go walk before it is too muggy and ozone-y,” that my autumn days will be well filled with preparations for ‘Second Seating.’ I consider the process to be similar to preparations for a great feast, a visual feast and with any luck, a thought provoking feast. For the last week or so I’ve focused on oyster shells and for good reason.

The McGrady’s and I gathered fresh oysters in Lilliwaup little over then days ago. And a big box of oyster shells and styrofoam popcorn is somewhere in the mail between Seattle and Houston. I couldn’t leave the shells behind. No, I see those oyster shells piled high on a heavy laden dinner table. The oysters themselves have been consumed. They are gone.

The table is beautiful, overrun with silver scallop shells, empty too and resting among the spent oyster shells. Silver candelabra no longer cast light on iced and quivering oysters or on the diners who enjoyed them. The dinner is over, for real and metaphorically. The message of the empty oyster shells? Well, the fate of our oceans. Tuna is tainted, species near lost and seas are rotting with poison run off. The table is beautiful, but at what cost?

The message of this dinner table is a long way from Lilliwaup, WA, where we shared a warm family time and the oysters were gathered by three generations. That pleasant afternoon encourages a call to action for our oceans. I’ll be visiting with the Galveston Bay Foundation and other groups so that this ‘Second Seating’ dining table will be not only beautiful, but will offer us responsible and perhaps uncomfortable answers to our dilemma with the oceans.

This is the table I am thinking about today.

What Is It All About?

‘Second Seating’ is an art installation scheduled to open in spring 2009 in a metal shop/ warehouse on the eastern edge of downtown Houston. ‘Second Seating, Houston’, the blog, will document the making of this installation. Designed as a series of elaborate fantasy dinner tables, ‘Second Seating’ will be created with cast off furniture, found and recycled objects, vintage table linens and silver flatware, assorted china, crockery, Coke bottles and oyster shells, paint and paper, all mixed with text and photo imagery.

‘Second Seating’ refers to the practice of turning tables at restaurants in order to serve more diners and thus, the title becomes a metaphor for second chances, the passage of time, fulfillment and memory. ‘Second Seating’ also references the revitalization of Houston’s East End with it ’second time around’ possibility.


With an installation, an artist often uses a particular space as an integral part of the work. Setting fantasy dinner tables in an unused warehouse and using raw and recycled materials from East End businesses and industry suggests that both the space and the resultant art work will purposely reflect its origins and indirectly deliver information about a specific community as manifested through a collaboration among several artists.

‘Second Seating’ will both celebrate the vibrancy of the East End community and highlight the vision of a group of artists who, using common materials, create uncommon beauty and a dreamlike environment that is poignant, whimsical and wise.

This blog will chart the making of ‘Second Seating.’ Please join us as we begin to gather the materials that, when assembled together, will make magic of whatever you thought about dining.

More details about individual tables and specific artist’s work will unfold - just like grandmother’s old fashioned, hard to iron linen table cloths.