Hey, guess what's going on this weekend? It's ARTfeast! You know, the annual fundraiser put on by ARTsmart, the charitable arm of the Santa Fe Gallery Association. It's actually a series of events, all of which combine art and food or wine. If you're art-ignorant like me, you'll go for the food and pick up a little something about art along the way.
The opening event will be a brainy sort of arty thing at SITE Santa Fe (7 pm Thursday, Feb. 23. $20. 1606 Paseo de Peralta, 989-1199. Tickets available at the Lensic box office, 211 W. San Francisco St., 988-1234). The exhibit, an installation by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang, "investigates the meaning of heroism in the age of the suicide bomber" (according to the gallery's Web site). I have absolutely no idea what that means. All I know is that the show involves tigers stuck full of arrows and suspended from the ceiling. Luckily, SITE Curator Laura Heon will be there to explain the whole thing as I inhale hors d'oeuvres from Mu Du Noodles.
Last week I called Mu Jing Lau, the chef and owner of Mu Du Noodles, to see what she'd be cooking for ARTfeast. The chef said she was still mulling it over, considering duck wontons, mung bean chips and eggplant dip, braised tofu, maybe a little Asian-cured gravlax. For sure, she said, she'd make her lion's head meatballs-inspired by the tigers in the exhibit. Oh, and firecracker egg rolls, because several of the artworks are made with gunpowder. I told her I was surprised that she'd gotten so much inspiration from the exhibit, and she said, "Well, you gotta pull it from somewhere!" Honestly, Mu's food is so good that I wouldn't care if she pulled the whole menu out of her, well, you know where.
Friday night brings the Edible Art Tour. This is precisely the kind of event I recently described as a slurp 'n' burp, except rather than racing around a crowded ballroom searching for the sautéed lobster tails you just saw on somebody's little plastic tray, you go traipsing all over town hunting for them. Starting at 5 pm Friday, Feb. 24, 30 chefs put out food at 30 different galleries and you pay $30 to get into them all. Because we simply don't have enough excuses to cruise around at happy hour, snacking, drinking and checking out men, all under the pretext of "art appreciation," do we? Are you with me on this?
Glenda Griswold of Peas 'n' Pod Catering will be setting out her nibbles at the Gaugy Gallery (418 Canyon Road). "They have very strong-colored art," Glenda says, "very Mediterranean." Something too mellow wouldn't go with the art, so she and her partner, Catherine O'Brien, who does most of the cooking, came up with a bold menu from Provençe. They'll serve coq au vin (chicken braised in wine), pisaladière, (think: gourmet pizza), salad with haricots verts (those are little green beans) and mushrooms, and boursin en croûte (herb-infused goat cheese on baguette rounds with olive tapenade). Ooh la la!
While Griswold said that they were inspired by the colors of the gallery's art, she also said that it was important not to forget the logistics of the event when planning the food. "Originally the restaurants started out trying to make creations out of their food [for ARTfeast], but we've always found that it doesn't always translate into something edible, or something that you can make enough of to feed people."
Maybe they'll teach themselves to make candies that look exactly like pieces of sushi, like confectionery artist Stevie Famulari of SugArt. Famulari's work perfectly straddles the line between food and art, being intentionally visually striking as well as just plain yummy. For the third year in a row, she'll be staked out with her sweet treats at Minkay Andean Art (233 Canyon Road). This year she wanted to do something new and different just for the event. You know what she came up with? Chocolate covered herb leaves. Sage, basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary and tarragon and spearmint, all dipped in chocolate and then painted with candy paint.
"They've got the greatest system of color," she says of the Andean artists, "so I wanted to do something colorful." Some of the herb leaves, like the basil and sage, will be dipped whole; others, like the tiny thyme and skinny tarragon, will be dipped in little piles. Each herb will be painted with a distinct color and the arrangement, she hopes, will bring to mind fall foliage.
It sounds beautiful and also a little bizarre, but only a little. Herbs in sweets have become more and more common in fancy restaurants and chocolate shops over the past few years. Maybe you've had basil ice cream or rosemary sorbet. Why not chocolate dipped tarragon? At least she's not serving chocolate dipped roasted garlic (yes, she gave it a try.)
For a complete list of ARTfeast events, including a wine tasting, brunch, home tour and dinner/auction, go to
. You can also buy your tickets there.
If any of your less-cultured buddies give you any grief about coughing up the cash for these events, remind them in your best Sally-Struthers-about-to-cry voice that it's for the children! ARTsmart gives the money it raises from ARTfeast to Santa Fe public schools for art supplies and programs. Because of ARTsmart's donations ($55,000 last year) some of Santa Fe's kids might grow up to become famous painters, sculptors or guys who stick arrows in tigers and hang them from the ceiling (whatever that's called).
