Don’t miss Tandy Beal’s HEREAFTERHERE: A Self-Guided Tour of Eternity
September 10-12 at the Cabrillo Crocker Theatre
in Aptos, California. For tickets.

More about this intriguing evening. Spanish-Moorish cuisine by Joze, wines to include La Gitana manzanilla; Hartley & Gibson fino; Cristalino cava; a light Marques de Caceres Rioja tinto; and Joze’ sangria made with the same rioja.

This first official collaboration between the new India Joze, and the 418 Project presents Raices Flamencas, a gustatory, dance and musical journey.
Flamenco, that brooding expression of nomadic suffering, emerged from Andalusia, Spain during the 19th century. But its roots reach back to the Indian gypsies’ arrival in the 1400s, with Arab Moors and Sephardic Jews adding their artistry to a uniquely Andalusian stew. When these three groups were outlawed by Christian conquerors the resulting brew was the haunting flamenco we savor today.

Featuring Ladino singer, Kat Parra; Odissi (Classical Indian) dancer, Revital Carroll; Moroccan musicians, Fattah Abbou and Mohamed Aoualou from the band Aza; and Rubina Valenzuela’s Flamenco Sin Fronteras with Diana Alejandre and  Ricardo Diaz. Matching culinary delights by India Joze.

You only need to know two words

Caramel Almond.

Next came the chocolate, loaded with artisanal chocolate bits amidst its sinfully dark chocolate creaminess. Yes, everything is organic! But somehow Kumec had saved the best taste for last. Pistachio. Pistachio the way it must have tasted in the Garden of Eden. Deeply earthily nutty, and yet like butter in its texture. I literally groaned right there in front of his fully-loaded ice cream display.

The flavors change daily Kumec told me with a sly smile. (Check his Facebook page for updates) All dairy is from fabled Strauss up in Petaluma, and all the fruit comes from our local farmer’s market. But the skill is 100% Kumec, learned from an Italian master. And it shows. If you love gelato, you’ll go stark raving mad for Kumec’s creamier-than-thou ice cream.

Mission Hill Creamery is housed in the front of the very conveniently located Culinary Center of Santa Cruz kitchen, at 504 Front Street @ Cathcart (close to the new India Joze). Open from noon until 8, until 9pm on weekends, and Closed on Monday, MHCreamery puts some delicious “art” into “artisan.”
Get over there immediately!!!

La Posta, on Tuesdays, when the fiercely romantic melodies of Italian folktunes by Emily and Paul Rangell make you want to never go home, is by now enshrined in the hearts of local diners who acknowledge the economy, but still refuse to compromise.

Catherine Stern’s kitchen continues to conquer.

We four began with a shared pizza topped with yellow tomatoes and caramelized onions. It disappeared within minutes. Then came a salumi misti sampler of prosciutto, salame and coppacolla perfectly cured and tinged with earthy nuance, which I consumed along with a salad of bitter greens, orange beets, horseradish crème fraiche, warm radish slices and topped with a gently hard-boiled egg from the pampered flock just outside the restaurant’s back door.

There was cannelloni, and chicken joined by peppers, and there was a dramatically simple entree of halibut, encrusted with herbs atop a field of infant spinach and fresh shelling beans laced with pancetta, leeks, and escarole.

We all sighed often during the meal, which was handsomely washed down with a variety of Sangioveses, Frappatos and Nebbiolos.

Look for me there next Tuesday — I’m hooked. La Posta - near the end of Seabright.

The Penny Ice Creamery opens today!

Housed at 913 Cedar Street in the handsomely renovated Mission Revival suite across from Gabriella (former doctor’s offices as many locals might recall), The Penny Ice Creamery is a new entrepreneurial venture from former Manresa pastry chef Kendra Baker and partner Zachary Davis. The two bring backgrounds deep in environmental business and finance (Davis’ UCSC background and subsequent MBA), as well as international culinary training in Wales, France, Boston and San Francisco.

Merging their skills and interests, the two arrived logically enough at the concept of small batch, local, seasonal and yes, organic ice creams, complete with designer flavors and toppings. And coffee drinks featuring fresh-roasted Verve coffees.
Open from noon daily (except for Monday) the Penny Ice Creamery is about to become your new warm weather hangout. Rush over and welcome them to the downtown community of places to pamper your palate.

The Penny Ice Creamery - 913 Cedar Street - 831/204-2523.

I have had to assume for the past year that the incessant updates on CNN and FOX news about the lifestyle status of Lindsay Lohan is purely comic relief. After all what with a tanking economy, horrific Mexican mafia revelations, Afghani human rights abuses, our government’s interminable vacations, and the BP oil disaster, there is much we need to escape. But Lindsay Lohan? A non-talent nobody with a drug problem? Please! It’s no longer high irony to track this poor human being’s wasted efforts at getting her father’s attention via drugs, pornographic photo shoots, public weeping and rapid reversals of hair color.

Enough. Just stop it!

And while you’re at it, CNN, FOX, People Magazine, et al., please stop returning the phone calls, text messages and emails of Jennifer Aniston’s publicist. No one cares about the surgically-altered former Mrs. Pitt. She has nothing to offer. And the final bit of public humiliation she has inflicted upon herself (and the public) is her current, pathetic “homage” to the brilliant Barbra Streisand (see the cover of Harper’s Bazaar).

Oh, Aniston didn’t do any actual performing. She didn’t learn to sing, or act. She simply posed for a series of photographs in which she dressed and groomed herself to mimic the incomparable singer/actress. (Even as conceptual art this is a tired gimmick.)  In other words, only by voguing as a superstar in drag could Aniston (clearly scraping the bottom of her meager barrel) get somebody’s attention.

Where are the psychoanalysts when we need them? These two narcissistic losers are looking for love in all the wrong places. I’m sorry for them. But I’m sick of hearing about them.

Whew!  I feel a lot better – or rather I feel better temporarily, because as soon as I read the NYTimes on-line tomorrow there is bound to be yet another Lohan “update” and another fake bit of gossip about Aniston’s on-going quest for a man, a baby, and/or a better profile. (Attention feminists: read that last line again. Consider the sad truth of it. Women who have all the outward trappings of cultural “success” are still needy and desperate for the things that women in the 13th century, and the 15th and the 19th, etc. were taught to crave. No. We have NOT come a long way baby.

The place was Fort Mason.

The day was perfect — a blend of fog and brilliant sunlight playing tag with the Golden Gate bridge in the distance.

The excuse was the American Craft Council design show and a chance to learn some tricks of the trade from my designer buddy Kate.

After feasting on handmade jewelry and textiles from the top artisans in the country, we cooled our heels (along with throngs of visitors) at Greens, where I’m happy to say both food and service at the legendary restaurant have never been better.

We started with a shared plate of warm grilled Blossom Bluff Farm peaches, shown here with Bellwether fromage blanc, tangy watercress and wildflower honey. Such straightforward flavors of summer, smartly paired to emphasize texture contrasts—yes, we could probably do this at home. But we don’t.

For main courses, Kate chose a wilted spinach salad (she was saving room for warm plum cake and almond ice cream), while I worked swiftly through a feisty platter of ricotta fresh corn cakes (shown here), with crème fraiche, dill, basil, and a wildly delicious salsa of fire-roasted tomatoes, cilantro and pumpkin seed.

We lingered over espresso, as much for the view as for the pampering service. How nice that some celebrated dining rooms continue to deliver the goods.

Planting a late-summer garden is a great way to save money on your fall and winter grocery bills, so come get some tips on growing a great fall and winter vegetable garden. Join gardener Trish Hildinger for a lecture/demo on “Planting the Thanksgiving Feast” at the UC Santa Cruz Farm on Saturday, August 28 from 10 am to 1 pm.

Included in the workshop will be information on vegetables that perform well in the Monterey Bay region, direct seeding and transplanting techniques, and soil preparation for fall planting.

Cost of the workshop is $15 for members of the Friends of the UCSC Farm and Garden, and $20 for the general public, payable the day of the class (check or cash only). No pre-registration is necessary. Meet at the Louise Cain Gatehouse on the UCSC Farm. Wear comfortable walking shoes and sun protection. There will be a break during the class, so bring a snack or lunch. Memberships to the Friends of the Farm and Garden are available at the workshop.

For more information, call (831) 459-3240, or check the Farm website.

The locally-made Pinotage — a varietal usually associated with South Africa and produced in only a handful of North American vineyards—is an opulent tipple indeed, offering enough tannic structure to handle its profusion of cassis, ripe plum, black pepper and sassafras. We loved this wine with bolognese and Italian sausage, but on second thought this out-sized wine cries out for steak.

Wine consultant Laura Ness sums it up as, “Pinot Noir on steroids.” This is a good thing.

Exotic and accessible, the Loma Prieta Pinotage 2008 is available at the mountaintop winery, and at Vinocruz ($45).

Q: Ian—your abstract paintings remind me of Philip Guston by way of Willem de Kooning. Are you aware of any particular influences in your style?

A: That’s quite the apt observation. Like de Kooning, there are bombastic color choices forcefully yet thoughtfully laid on top of each other to make homely, sad, and whimsical forms similar to Guston’s.

Francis Bacon’s witty horror, stylized violence, and macabre non-sequiturs have always been my favorite. The immediacy of his work is something I strive for. I compare my work with the COBRA movement’s (based in Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam which included such artists as Karel Appel and Asger Jorn) uses of abstract expressionism in the construction of figurative forms.  I am also influenced by Carroll Dunham’s work, especially of the 1990s, which places teeth and genitalia on abstract forms in order to dramatically and instantaneously anthropomorphize them. Eyes and teeth added to my compositions significantly help unify my paintings and give them a more contemporary twist.

Q: How did your MFA work at UCLA help you develop your creative instincts?

A: UCLA nurtured my creativity by channeling it into a certain rhythm and regimentation that develops a whole painting which resonates up close and from far away, not just with me but with others. I now more fully imagine stepping outside of myself after painting furiously and see how it looks from afar, from a perspective of one who has just entered the room. In addition, my very intuitive color combinations have become more acute than in the past. Finally, my patience with the creative process has improved: I now allow a work to develop over a longer period of time.

Q: Can you describe the process involved in making one of these large-scale paintings?

A: Most of the large-scale paintings take months to craft—three to four months a painting, with three to four at a time. They typically start out with a number of expansive, quick, and improvised marks with a brush or oil pastel, or with a monochromatic underpainting. (In the past, a simple cosmological chart of my own sometimes took place of these dashes or color fields.)  I then typically accentuate the marks or surface with bright and jarring color combinations, thick/forceful brushstrokes, and awkward forms that resonate with a viewer immediately. Attempting to organize such conspicuous and expressionistic gestures in a prolonged improvisational fashion results in a compounding of second-guesses wrought with frustration at the collapse of control, yet something gestates in the chaos and confusion. The piled-on inconsistencies along with the privileging and repeating of idiosyncrasy and novelty result in unanticipated new forms that spring forth from the muddled myriad of coalescing marks. These collective structures are typically not as engrossing as their disparate elements and require endless refinement; however, they do spur me to labor over the painting in search of a balanced formation. This process results in a highly formal and vague narrative that develops with the work and references my previous paintings. Occasionally, an essential last-ditch effort in the form of a violent adjustment that sweeps over nearly the entire canvas (possibly a scraping down and/or broad application of color) forges one or two forms that are highly integrated with the painting—a superstructure that bluntly binds the work in a considerable dynamism. Crag (first image at top) is an excellent example of such a procedure.

Lately though, a fair amount of my works have started out with a new style of using an amalgam of dried paint scrapings mixed in with Galkyd (an alkyd resin) and spread over a typically black surface, resulting in a celestial look to the painting. Sometimes this becomes the underpainting as in The Vault of Heaven (above, horizontal).
Q: Did you always make art?

A: Somewhat. When I was a child I drew, made characters and stories about them. I was really into science, astronomy, cosmology, cybernetics, particle physics, or at least what I what I took those sciences to be. I now think that I actually liked the aesthetics of the theories, the shape of the theories—the appearance, physical manifestations, possibilities, and emotions of them—as opposed the analytical processes by which they are developed.

Q: Are you consciously working against the digital tide?

A: I’d say I’m doing so by working in an ancient, analog medium steeped in history. A painting is handmade, one-of-a kind, and unique, something fairly rare nowadays with easily copied and dispersed information and items by means of computers/ telecommunication/machines/assembly lines, etc. My work used to loosely illustrate this digital, exponentially increasing techno craziness and how I felt it fit into a history/ narrative/cosmology/mythology of the universe. But now my work is more elemental: more about the phenomenology of paint itself.

Q: What do you do in your “spare time?” or is it always painting?

A:  I do paint a lot; however, I also enjoy backpacking, museums, running, family, old friends, reading, writing, and watching films.

Loaded with leather, a central core of robust red meat and soft peppers, this big, beautiful wine floats a hint of roses and fennel in both nose and finish. Extreme persistence highlights this creation of celebrated winemaker Vanessa Wong, and the name “les Titans” derives from some large-scale redwoods on the Sonoma vineyard’s property.

The Peay “Les Titans” syrah is easily one of the finest California syrahs I’ve tasted. Now at Soif. Go there and sample.