FOOD AS ART: BROCCOLI, BODIES AND THE WORK OF CARL WARNER

When I was but a Yankee lad I used to pretend I was a colossus of some sort whenever my mother made me eat broccoli. I would pull the "trees" from the ground, roots and all, and bring them up to my giant, gaping mouth. That was among my first bouts of creativity with food.

Photo courtesy of Google Images (/broccoli_tree)*

Years later I would stage and record the Food Wars, brought to life through the excruciating medium and format of stop-motion animation. I did not take photos like many do to create such an illusion. No, I kept the camera running for each extended sequence and in post I cut any frames with my hand out and left only a couple frames worth of each positioning that I wanted. It made shooting breezy (relatively speaking for stop-motion filmmaking) but it made editing a splicing nightmare. Well, here's the result of that endeavor (I actually ended up using it for my final project in my History of Creativity class at BYU, citing references to The Three Musketeers and what not... I got an A): 

The bastards that be have muted this and Episode IV. Must be for the John Williams' Star Wars theme I put at the beginning. Might re-upload sometime and cite fair use for educational purposes. The rest of the music was original tinkerings assembled from the tracks on GarageBand. For whatever reason it appears to have become my most viewed YouTube video, which is pathetically low at some 1,400. There must be another type of "food war" that's dragging mine in tow for online searches.

The broccoli and Food Wars came to my mind this morning after I first saw the work of Carl Warner, particularly his Foodscape series. The London-based artist worked as an advertisement photographer before wanting to attempt something different. When shopping at the supermarket one day "he found some wonderful Portabello mushrooms which he thought looked like some kind of tree from an alien world. So he took them back to his studio with a few other ingredients such as rice seeds and beans with a view to try and create a miniature scene on a table top." (Source) And with that, Mushroom Savanna became his first of many Foodscapes:

Mushroom Savanna

Peruse the Foodscape portfolio for yourself to see more of Carl's astonishing work. Here are some that especially stood out to me:

Cheesescape

Meat Factory

Stilton Cottage

Volcano Valley

Cowboy Valley

Chinese Junk

The Great Wall of Pineapple

2001 a Breadscape

Lettuce Sea

Cabbage Seascape

I could very easily post them all, rather, I encourage you to look at them all. Using only foods provides a vast color palette that is manufactured by nature herself. In all of the above (sans Volcano Valley) you have civilization, small or large, living on the land. But their structures, even the Meat Factory, do not feel to encroach or otherwise pollute. It's an ideal and fantastical situation, perfect for a photograph - otherwise all plucked would spoil. Warner has taken the age-old tradition of Gingerbread houses and widened his scope of possibilities almost infinitely.

Candy Cottage

A few peaks behind the scenes:

Warner's first book, Food Landscapes, is currently on sale over at Amazon.

It all reminds me of another book we've had on our wish-list for some time, Microworlds.

Pick the other areas of Carl Warner's peanutty brain (gosh, I love his website design too), he actually has a series of Otherscapes:

Iron Temples

Shoulder Hills

Warner's Bodyscapes series was my first exposure to his work. It instantly reminded me of a picture by Liu Wei, a Chinese photographer:

Landscape

Landscape by Liu Wei (2004)*

Does a cannibal look at this the way we look at Warner's Foodscapes?

You never know what will inspire you, Portabello mushrooms or broccoli, some other food or body part, or otherwise.

Broccoli Forest

Here's Warner working on the set for Lettuce Seascape:

Until next time, keep putting a frame around all you see.

*All other photos courtesy of CarlWarner.com, Amazon.com and BoredPanda.com.

PONDERING THE ACT OF WRITING TODAY

There's simply not enough time at night to do all you wanted to do during the day.

In our Internet era it's impossible to go through a day without using a written language, but writers must find offline ways to write.

The evolution of keyboards has always been downsizing. From typewriters to half an iOS screen. They may one day shrink into non-existence.

What does the future hold? Diction, at least until telepathic technology. Most of all I fear the absence of actual text. Helps to see words.

Until that time I'm just going to keep writing/typing. More for the future to burn through. What will it be at the last stand?

A battle for whatever side is faster: The destroyers and the creators. That's what it has always been. Earth & Time have always won.

Perhaps the greatest foe is fatigue? Fogs the mind, kills desire, tempts us to put down pens and walk away from computers. Promises freedom.

The greatest warriors are those that create during destruction. Those that push when pulled and jump up when realizing what they have.

Write. Type. Drink water. Pencil things in. Pen things down. Checking off is key (for body and mind). Plan. And then push.

PIC & TALE #7: BREAKFAST WITH HANNIBAL

The tongues sizzled soon enough. We were all unable to speak. Breakfast with Hannibal.

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Click here to learn more and Pic & Tale. 

Have your own three-sentence story to go with the picture above? Feel free to share it in the comments below!

PIC & TALE #6: POOL OF DEW

We stood around the pool of Dew. Each then drank their due. Who would be the first to spew? Eww.

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Click here to learn more and Pic & Tale. 

Have your own three-sentence story to go with the picture above? Feel free to share it in the comments below!

PIC & TALE #5: TROPHY FROM MY LAST HITCHHIKER

Stepping out of my car I saw it laying there. A trophy from my last hitchhiker. I put it my pocket and went about my day.

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Click here to learn more and Pic & Tale. 

Have your own three-sentence story to go with the picture above? Feel free to share it in the comments below!

PIC & TALE #4: THE BIRDS

He headed East on Venice towards his favorite theater. Tonight he was seeing the latest restoration of Hitchcock's "The Birds." But they reached him first.

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Click here to learn more and Pic & Tale. 

Have your own three-sentence story to go with the picture above? Feel free to share it in the comments below!

PIC & TALE #3: BERMUDA TRIANGLE FROM ABOVE

They had me surrounded. Like a Bermuda Triangle from above. I put my shirt back on and waited.

(See the inspiration for this Pic & Tale.)

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Click here to learn more and Pic & Tale. 

Have your own three-sentence story to go with the picture above? Feel free to share it in the comments below!

PIC & TALE #2: STAIN-GLASS SENTINELS

He awoke and saw them. Like stain-glass sentinels coming to take him away. He asked, "Do I have time to pack a bag?"

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Click here to learn more and Pic & Tale.

Have your own three-sentence story to go with the picture above? Feel free to share it in the comments below!

PIC & TALE #1: SPEEDING CITY BUS

Introducing Pic & Tale

Ever heard of Very Short Stories? It's one of the must-follow Twitter accounts regardless of interests. (Okay, they do fall a bit on the macabre side of things hence the Edgar Allen Poe profile picture.) Basically it's Tweet-sized (the sanctioned 140 characters) fiction! They are conjured by Sean Hill and he even has a book with some 300 of them. Well, the idea of a story that could be that short really inspired me and so I thought I'd try my hand at it but introduce a new element to the table: iPhone pictures! Similar to the iPhone Memories, another type of post I do, these are pictures that I take and then infuse my words into for a new whole. The difference is that iPhone Memories are more snapshots of people, times and places of my life while Pic & Tale (that's what I'm calling it) will be primarily short bursts of creativity. I will likely first post them via Instagram as I did with this first one but will get around to publishing it here on the blog. I'd love to see some Pic & Tale entries of your own or, if you feel so inclined, you write a short story to match the picture. The only rule? Three sentences* or less.

* No run-ons! C'mon!

Speeding City Bus

As Martin stumbled off the curb he finally recalled the landscape of her face... He looked up. The realization hit him like a speeding city bus.

TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG

I was chatting with my oldest sister the other day. I talk with her at least weekly. She's back in Utah. She was at her computer working on her blog which she updates fairly often enough. Enough so that her family and friends know what's going on in her family's life week to week and month to month. My other sister is the same way. These women manage to both be full-time mothers (of multiple delinquents no less) and adequate bloggers, among many other things. It's admirable.

It must have been our mother and her scrap-booking over the years (recently she has also turned to a form of blogging) that planted this seed in the three of us. We each have a desire to document the going-ons in our lives. Some people write journals or diaries (some people just have diarrhea), others blog, others simply tell Facebook and Twitter their every move or perhaps just occasionally check in, some do all of these things, and then others prefer to not share with the world what is going on in their lives. My father falls in this last camp. Social networking? Not for him. Blog or website? Forget about it. Journal keeping? Well, he's sure his wife mentions him enough and that will suffice. Record-keeping (of which blogging is one of myriad forms) just isn't a desire for everybody. In my father's defense, I will mention that he has written a self-published tome of his own consisting of stories and experiences from his life. (Mother did so too, I made mention of this in my first post on The Tome of J.S. Lewis.) They presented these bound pages to their children on Christmas of 2010. I need to locate those again as I did not read them all. Not sure where they are in this still fresh post-move to Los Angeles.

Nancy had a blog and photography website before I even met her, but she started Our Perfect Bubble shortly after we had tied the note and drove ourselves and our belongings to the West Coast. Over there she has documented some our married life thus far, from the foods she has made to the day-dates we've gone on. Fashion and film are other interests of hers and she's thrown posts primarily about those into the mix. Her large and plentiful-pixeled pictures really are a highlight over there.

So my sister asks of me what's up with my blog, meaning this one. I had one blimey post on the first day of the year and not a single one since! Yeah, that tends to be how I roll. (This is the modern day equivalent of writing in your journal once in a blue moon and ending each entry with a resolve to make it a daily practice... You either know what I'm saying or you don't. It's telling that I did that when I was younger and now I do this.) It's not for lack of desire. There's always something I want to share. It's because of that tendency that I've never been bored in my life. I blog a lot, just not about my life. Though, that's not entirely true. If you know me you might know that I publish much opinion over at The Film Tome. Thoughts on film, that's what's up. Still, nearly every review offers a glimpse into my life. Some even consist of anecdotes regarding the circumstance in which I saw a given film or my preconceived notions about it (before I saw it). Film is such a significant part of my life that I think sometimes what I'm writing over there is an equivalent to what someone else would be focusing on in their personal life. Still, it isn't all my life.

I have several blogs (not counting Our Perfect Bubble which I have contributed to). Besides this one and The Film Tome I have one called All Manner of Posts which is actually what The Film Tome originally stemmed from. I have one called Euphrates which is primarily for my poetry - haven't done one on there September of 2011! As a cousin to The Film Tome I started The Video Game Tome but have since stopped posting on there with the created joint-effort of These Things We Call Video Games. It's all so unnecessarily cluttered and so here's what I've decided to do:

The Film Tome, since it is very much it's own beast by this point, and These Things We Call Video Games, since it is a group project, will remain unchanged. You will ever find links to both at the top bar of this blog under "Film" and "Video Games" respectively. Any time I am writing about either of those two topics it will be posted on those two sites. Everything else? It will be posted here on The Tome of J.S. Lewis. I will be using other categories (i.e. My Life) for easy sorting and filtering and keep the Blog Archive available as a sidebar on the left. While All Manner of Posts and the like will not be immediately deleted from existence I will refrain from posting thereon. Posts about random news stories, thoughts on monkeys, so on and so forth will all be published here now. Expect me to further flesh out the top bar with the best overall topic selections. I may have to have a "Random" topic available, eh?

I wonder if I have blogged about my first-world blogging problems more than anybody else in the world...

To blog or not to blog?

I choose to blog; I'm just trying to make it better and easier for myself and those who care to hear about it.

Peace out.

2013

This blog sees the light of day less than a Scalopus aquaticus (pictured above, better known as the common mole). What a specimen this one is. Sometimes Pokemon ain't got nothin' on real life...

I know I'm more than capable of being a "consistent blogger." Last year I posted some 150 times on The Film Tome (and-then-some on other blogs). Why then do I not update this one very oft? I am much more excited to talk movies than I am to talk about my life I suppose, but at the end of my life what am I going to be able to leave my posterity to know about me? Sure, they'll know I was downright obsessed with film and I would be delighted if any of them shared that passion, but they may want to know about other aspects of my life (AKA The Film of Jared Scott Lewis.)

A year ago this day I wrote a post entitled "2012." It was valuable to look back at what was going through my mind and down through my fingers that night. Hindsight makes them invaluable.  That, more than anything, should be the fire that fuels my drive to improve my dedication to this personal blog. So many things have transpired since then. I was in China at the time meeting my girlfriend's family. Since then we both graduated from BYU, we tied the knot and we moved to California. Some of the biggest milestones one confronts in one's lives and I've knocked a few out in one fell swoop of a year!

2012 will be a year I'll never forget. 2013 may not have as big events (in fact, I kind of hope it doesn't), but there are aspects aplenty in my life that I am working on improving. As I type this post my dear Nancy is in the other one putting together her first post of the year for The Perfect Bubble, a blog that she started this last year that is a far better documentation of our lives together than you'll currently find here. She also blogs about some of her favorite things there. Anyways, said blog post is about some of our New Year's Resolutions (five each). One of mine was to improve in my record keeping. In addition to daily journal entries I wanted to post on this blog once a week. So far, so good.

Here's to a New Year. Cheers to you and yours!

P.S.

My first summer out of high school I worked in Alaska (this was 2006). It was a hellish job, housekeeping, but I honed wanted habits, labored, and was constantly inspired by the mystere of that region. My brother-in-law was a body builder at this time (a great fit for my so-athletic-it-makes-me-ill sister). He pressured me into going to the Gustavus High School gym on some of my mornings there. In the weight room there were motivational phrases black-marker-ed onto the wall. One day we brought our own utensil and left our mark. Here's what I wrote:

If I ever return to that small town in South East Alaska I will seek out the building, the specific wall therein and see if my "tag" is still there. That inspection will just be for kicks, because I haven't forgotten or stopped striving to do what I wrote that day. Not by a long shot.