Eating Our Words

10/25/2010

Last week was one of those crazy busy weeks where everything is overwhelming and exciting all at once and I feel like only now after a day of lazing about at home can I catch my breath. Along with being in the middle of crunch time at the gallery, one of my artists was part of an amazing event at a local museum, a friend hosted a big successful fashion party where beautiful girls swung through the air, and I launched a new project that I’ve been busting at the seams about with zeal.

Have I mentioned Gabrielle Calvocoressi before on this blog? Gaby is my sister’s mentor: a poet and essayist whose last book Apocalyptic Swing was a LA Times Book Award Finalist. I have heard her read at multiple venues around the city, most recently at the Hammer Museum, and feel lucky to call her a friend and now creative partner.

So Gaby and I had this idea – let’s start a reading series, but let’s make it really fun. Like really really fun. Let’s make it a reading and food series where we pair people who are doing incredible things in the world of words with those shaking up the world of food and invite them to share an evening together at my gallery. Done. Can’t wait. Let’s call it Eating Our Words.

So for our first event we invited Dana Goodyear, one of my favorite LA-based writers. Dana is a poet and also writes the New Yorker columns: California Postcards, Letters from LA and Annals of Gastronomy. When I first met her at an event last year I had to make a focused effort not to geek out to hard and say things like, “Omg i loved in that Kelly Wearstler article when you blah blah blah, etc”. I kept my cool.

For the food element of the evening, we enlisted master chocolate maker Patricia Tsai of ChocoVivo who set up a tasting of her divine Mexican stone ground chocolate. So while Dana read selected poems and non-fiction, guests snacked on the handmade chocolate (she knocked it out of the park with the spicy Rustic Mayan and Toasted Rice/Cinnamon flavors).

After the reading many guests purchased Dana’s book, Honey and Junk, and she happily signed copies.

Along with many new faces (who presumably heard about the event on here or here) some of my favorite ladies came out for the event and having them there made the room feel so cozy and warm. Also loved our post-event debrief over wine and cheese and the Mandrake. Perfect end to a great evening.