On being good at looking

You recently released a book of your photographs and writing on the food and art scene in 1970s downtown New York. How did you find your way to making art, writing, and food?

Well, art kind of saved your life, didn’t it? And then art is—if you kind of have a nervous breakdown, you go sit in front of a painting and you could get fortified. It’s a fortifying experience.

I guess as a child, I always made art. I do remember very little about my mother because she died when I was five, but she had us very mindfully always doing projects at the tables. I do remember a few memories of her, and there we were at the card tables, cutting things and painting things. I remember a very sad thing where we did that when we stayed with my grandmother while my mother was dying in the hospital and we didn’t know she was dying. I was making art and I said to my father—who had just been at the hospital—I said, “Oh, take this to Mommy.” And he said, “I can’t.” And I said, “What? You can’t.” And he said, “Because you don’t have a mother anymore.” And that’s how he told me when my mother died. And it was like, “What?” and you just feel like the bottom fell out of your life. It was horrible. I don’t even know if we discussed anything about death. I don’t think we ever did. She died of leukemia. It was probably doctor induced. They were using sulfur drugs, kind of like they used penicillin and they used too much. It was a medical story of 1944 and five.

Anyway, how did I get into art? I don’t know. It just was there. I was an art historian in college and I guess I just gradually kind of had an art teacher or something in college that was my friend. It wasn’t serious, but if I had an extra something or other, I would take an art class. But yeah, we like art. And then ceramics was just making things with your hands.

There is a sense of exuberance and the unexpected across all your mediums.

I guess we like the unexpected. Everything is on the verge of original, right? I would say that’s about it. And not too many rough edges. If something’s too ugly, well, then you dip it all in black or something. There was a time that everything was black because it just took care of that problem. Or white maybe. Green is probably my favorite color because of the growth, the leaves, and grass, and so green just seems to come up. And green is a better color to work with than blues. I’m not a blue person, although we did majolica once, didn’t we? And that was all blue and white. I use a lot of black and green and gold and yellow. A little red. You have to have a little red in everything.

I agree. Tell me about how you got into writing about food.

I guess I liked those writers—and there were very, very few of them—that used their own experience with the situation that they were in. I didn’t like that more formal way of writing an essay about something. I wanted to talk about the personal iterative interactions. That’s what drew me. So if things got too dry or too formal or like the perfect food or the perfect recipe and this lovely dinner, I would rather write about more amusing people.

Similarly, you’ve said that your public access TV show, New York Eats (1974-76), was created as a reaction to the formal format of cooking shows of the time. In your show, you’d go into the homes of everyday New Yorkers—including a circus troupe and their elephant—and film them cooking in their kitchens.

I didn’t like polished things. Interesting people, but not famous people. I had access to quite a few circus people. That was really great. I had about five or six circus people that I wrote articles on. And my artist friends, I think, were pretty original. They had their own way of cooking. I think most artists always have a handful of recipes that they kind of invent themselves because they look at food as a raw material to do things with. Maybe they came from Spain or maybe they came from Portugal, so they bring that information with them. That international community of artists that we had in New York—certainly the Italians—I learned a lot. Just a few Italians will set you up for life.

There was a thing called a Portapak that everyone had. It wasn’t super broadcast-good at the time, but that’s why the show went out with smaller channels. You could spend money and have it perfected more. We didn’t have any money. That was a wonderful thing. And I don’t think they have that now. It was kind of a raw system, black and white. We had reels and it was real, real life, early recording equipment. It was arduous to edit. It was manual. You had to sit there with the reels. In the beginning, you just literally cut it and put Scotch tape. Then I guess then it got a little more sophisticated. You could get a rendering somewhere, somewhere in the ether and do it that way, more abstract. I can’t exactly explain, but that was the beginning. It was a very physical thing. We did a lot of shooting. “We” being mostly me.

My idea was to get people in their homes. But then I think that I had a personality that people really liked to watch. It was always my little introductions that were more amusing than the boring people cooking. Purdue Chicken [was] very interested in working with me, very interested. But I had a little trouble. I didn’t really have a very big vocabulary with how to cook. My uncle would say, “Nancy, you should go to blah blah school.” And I’d say, “No, we don’t need to go to blah blah school. Oh, no.” But in truth, probably I should have gone to blah blah cooking school for a year and then probably gone back with my camera.

And then you opened a restaurant, The Tenth Avenue Bar. What was that like?

Well, I’m glad that we had the restaurant. It’s probably really good to work until exhaustion. It was sort of like a Broadway play. I mean, the show had to go on, the cooking had to be done, the people had to eat. And it’s kind of a performance.

The food always had to be kind of originally right and not overcooked and it had to—I don’t know—t had to have some originality all the time and freshness of the season. I really probably could’ve been a contender. We were written about by a lot of people. Everyone wrote about us, our restaurant, and I had written about a lot of our food, too. But maybe we just didn’t have a restaurant long enough to become a real staple on the scene.

And what was wrong with the restaurant? Well, it was kind of in an odd location, but it became a major location—it was around Chelsea. We were amateurs, so I think that sometimes we weren’t the fastest. You had to wait awhile for your food.

Have you gone through periods of not making anything?

Oh, yes. That’s awful.

What do you do? How do you get out of it?

Well, it happens almost every winter. You get really blocked and you go, “Oh, no.” I mean, how many books can you read? And then you read newspapers and magazines, you go, “Oh, god, this is so mindless.” I’m at a certain age now that, well, you don’t want to waste time, but here I am wasting time. I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t have to raise children. I don’t have to work for a living, so I can waste time.

It’s an interesting phrase, to waste time.

But maybe wasted time is good. It’s downtime, a little bit.

That’s true. What do you do to get going again?

I guess I have an exercise thing. I love exercise. I mean, I love going to Pilates. I love running. I used to run four or five miles a day, at least five days a week. Physical activity is the best. Or you could just go into the kitchen and start making anything. As soon as you pick up a knife or cut into a vegetable, an onion or an apple, you’re kind of out of it all day because you’re going to do something.

Action.

Action cooking. That’s what I do. You listen to music, you dance, you talk to friends. Oh, my god. If we didn’t have friends, I would be very depressed. But we’re so lucky that we still have a nice group of friends. And we travel a little bit. So you don’t really get depressed, if you’re lucky enough to keep moving and if your health is good enough—and mine is certainly good enough.

I’m very thankful for the meditation practice, too. I’m an intermittent meditator, but it’s very important in my life. Basically I kind of get a little meditation every day. We kind of meditate as you walk, when you’re alone in your garden. It’s pretty easy to get in the zone once you recognize that zone.

I’m very fortunate to have this piece of land here [in Germantown, NY] near the river. So it’s not like in the city where you look out and there’s a building there. I guess I like looking, and I’m probably pretty good at looking, seeing something. That gets incorporated into your work, other people’s work. Art comes off of art, and it’s refined by, inspired by—well, inspired is an awful word.

Why is “inspired” an awful word?

I think it’s overused. Like, “You’re so creative.” It sounds like a lady’s afternoon tea party or something: “Oh, you’re so creative. What a nice crochet you’re doing.”

Are you obsessive?

Yeah, I think you have to be. Otherwise what’s the point?

What words feel resonant to you right now?

I mean, love and kindness.

Those are good ones.

I think those are very important. And listening and intention. Having an intention and caring to hear. Maybe I don’t hear nearly enough, but it’s one of my goals to listen to what people are saying.

What would you say to your younger artist self?

Don’t worry. Just keep working. I think that’s the best advice I ever got. Just keep working. Keep doing it and it turns into something. I think that’s the thing. Don’t question it to the point where you’re incapacitated. Keep doing it, because even if it goes zigzag, something comes out of it. Even if you stop and something else plops in, you keep the process processing.