ArtSprings Studio is a working artist studio open to visitors to see the creative process in action. This newly envisioned space is host to interactive art events and projects, surprise art happenings, and classes lead by Barbara Thomas, a teaching artist with over 20 years experience in leading arts institutions.
Geoffrey Drummond is executive director of The Food Lab at SUNY Stony Brook Southampton, with a stellar epicurean past — writing, directing, and producing award-winning shows like “Avec Eric” with Eric Ripert, “The Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor, and years of working closely with Julia Child on several projects.
They recently took the time to sit down together and speak with James Lane Post.
You both are so interesting. When did you connect?
Geoffrey Drummond: We met actually at an art gallery opening down on Broome Street in New York. It was about 17 years ago. It wasn’t Barbara’s show. It was a mutual friend, Louise Peabody. I knew almost nobody there. I left and went out to Balthazar just to get away from that crowd, although I had seen Barbara as one of the people —
Barbara Thomas: Yes, we noted each other.
GD: —who looked like somebody of interest that I’d want to talk to. And she was with other people. And my reticence kind of dominated or undominated and I left and went out and then went to a kind of after-party there. And we ended up talking over food as one tends to do.
BT: We pretty much talked all night.
GD: And it was at a time where my marriage was not quite working, but we were really working on trying to make it work. So, I said, “Goodbye. Really nice to meet you.”
BT: And that was the end of that.
GD: But then I was on Barbara’s mailing list. I’d get these postcards from Sag Harbor, where she was having shows. About a year later, after my marriage ended, I called her up and said, “Hey, how would you like to get together for a glass of wine?”
BT: And after about three or four dates, it was just kind of obvious that we were going to be together.
GD: I was going back and forth and running around and going to LA a bunch, but the shows with Julia had ended. This was 2005. She died in 2004. Believe it or not, we worked up until she was just almost 90 years old; she was 88, 89 when we did the last show together, with Jacques Pépin. And then, when I came back, Barbara and I started going out.
And Barbara, why were you traveling?
BT: I was still doing my house portrait painting, which I had been doing for about 20 years out here. But I just got this wonderful gig in Ojai, California. I stayed in these people’s guest house and painted their avocado ranch, which was really fun. It was just a terrific job. I sort of felt like, “Oh, this is good. Geoff will think I’ve got my career together and I’m doing things and I’m a really busy person.”
GD: (Laughs) “And I’m painting food.”
BT: Yeah. That was kind of funny.
Barbara, tell me a little bit about the ArtSprings Studio. Its sounds interesting.
BT: Bridget, it was the weirdest thing. One day, I just felt like I had a calling to do this. The impetus was looking at my brother, Max Siebel, who is also an artist. He does a lot of work about animals. And I just thought, “Wow, a show about animals. That would be really interesting.” And so, the idea kind of started formulating in my mind. The show that just ended was “A Plea For The Animals,” which is actually based on a book that Geoff gave me of a Buddhist philosopher, Matthieu Ricard.
GD: He’s a physicist. He’s a brilliant theoretical physicist.
BT: He was a physicist who became a Buddhist and is a huge proponent of … It’s not really politicized animal rights, although, when you read his book, it has a huge amount of work about animal cruelty and the food industry and all kinds of things.
That’s great.
BT: It just came together and so far, so good.
GD: I just wanted to add, the ArtSprings gallery was much more than a show because she recreated her studio space, rebuilt it and repainted it into what really feels like a terrific little gallery that is also a studio. So, it’s a pop up gallery in a studio, but the work is curated within a curated environment that goes on not only inside the studio, but outside with wildflowers planted, and so on.
So, Geof, did you watch the “Julia” series on HBO?
GD: They did a terrific job. The whole show basically takes place before-and-during Julia’s first season. I did not get involved with Julia until she was 80 years old, and then worked with her for about 10 years. I basically brought her out of retirement to do a series. It was “Baking with Julia,” it was “In Julia’s Kitchen with Master Chefs.” And then we did “Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home.” By chance I met David Hyde Pierce, who plays Paul, Julia’s husband, on the HBO series. And we had great talks about Julia and Paul. He was so important in Julia’s life. As we traveled around the country, she would call him every day. She would call “my Paulie” at 4 o’clock Eastern time, no matter where we were.
So, now I’m jumping back to you, Barbara. We’re talking about food and art, and they both are ways into the heart. How about a food show?
BT: Well, interestingly, I actually did a show. You know Colin Ambrose who has Estia? He shows artists at the restaurant, and he had asked me to do something. I wanted to do something specifically for his gallery, not just hang up random things. So, I had an idea; it was all paintings that I did from vegetables that I grew in my own garden. And then it was also fish, that I had not caught, but that I had seen being fished on the beach. And then some chickens and roosters that were not mine, but were some of my neighbors.
So, you were sneaking onto somebody else’s property and painting their chickens?
BT: Oh, I did that a lot. (Laughs.) Anyway, it was just a look at some of the food of our lives and I loved it. This new gallery is very theme-oriented and it’s not just having shows, which is why it’s called ArtSprings Studio. And we’ve actually eliminated the word gallery from it because I don’t want to have a public space. It’s on our property.
So what’s next?
BT: The next event in September is called “Who am I? Who are you?” It’s an interactive art workshop for anybody. You don’t have to know how to draw. And it’s based on a project that I did through the Parrish, teaching at Riverhead Correctional Facility. I gave art classes to incarcerated women. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever been part of. One of my classes was mutual portrait drawing and it was two prisoners sitting across from each other, drawing each other. It was a very moving, mutual human experience of them drawing each other. So, that’s going to be a good day for people to kind of examine our own humanity. And then the show itself will be the portraits that all the people who come to do it have done.
Geof, what’s the latest with The Food Lab?
GD: When we first started, everything was around people wanting to get involved in food business. When I first started doing food stuff, it was really about how to cook and now it’s really evolved into how we eat. Sustainability has become a major topic that kind of parallels taste. We talk about food and climate. One other thing we’re doing, because it’s part of the university, we are also beginning to develop curriculum and classes, a program dealing with food studies, sustainability issues, and food ecology, basically.
Food ecology. That’s amazing.
GD: So, I would say many more topics of relevance to community and to caring about food. And that’s where the next conferences will be. I’ve also been working with this amazing neurobiologist whose specialty is on taste. So, we’re looking at things that taste, which is the biology and neurology and flavor.
BT: I believe the world is in a really, really serious crisis and many crises all over the place like fires and actual fires that need putting out. And I think I see that Geof’s thing is moving from people enjoying eating pasta in a restaurant to solving issues of world hunger. And people, in my world, have faced their mortality in a way that they have never done before. And they want more meaningful answers to why they’re here. I talk to my students about it. Why did you come to class? Why do you want to explore this part of yourself? And it really has to do with all of us who are looking at survival in a different way. And we’re looking at our mental picture and our future and what are we doing with our time and what does life mean? All these very, very heavy questions are coming into people’s minds.
And it sounds like your — I don’t want to say “art therapy,” because that has a connotation to it — your gift is to help people who can use it to help construct some sort of meaning.
BT: I think I’m trying to help. I’m not trained in art therapy, but it’s helping people to access these desires that they have to create something. My method is getting across that you don’t have to have a lot of skills. You can do something with relative simplicity. Here are the materials, here’s how you use them. And that’s kind of how I teach. I mean, in a weird way, some of the classes are almost like cooking classes, because it’s like laying out all the materials, just like ingredients. And here’s how you make the dish. Here’s how you make the green and here’s how you paint a cloud. And eventually it all comes together and it’s either a plate of spaghetti or it’s a painting of a beautiful day on Long Island.
GD: It’s all about nourishment in different ways. Barbara is nourishing people through the connectivity with art. It is really nourishing them in a way that a chef would look to bring nourishment, a connectivity through the food, the connectivity between people.
BT: And it’s pleasurable.
GD: Yeah. And it’s really important. And what we’re doing, with The Food Lab, is kind of trying to bring this whole idea of nourishment, our emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual relationship with food and each other to more and more people.
To learn more, visit artspringsstudio.com and thefoodlab.org.
