OPEN RESTAURANT - BAY AREA - NOW.

new project in the bay area. absolutely worth checking out.

from their website:

• WHAT IS OPEN?

  OPEN is a place to sit down and have a basic meal for a reasonable price but as it exists at the intersection of performance and everyday life, it turns an ordinary business proposition into a social sculpture. OPEN makes available all the physical elements and activities of an ordinary restaurant for artists along with cooks, servers, farmers, activists, community members and educators to develop creative projects that extend the vernacular of food to social, political, economical and environmental issues thus making visible the web of relationships that are brought together in and around a plate of food. OPEN, as a creative gathering of people and ideas, offers a stage on which to discuss, formulate and play out the issues involved in feeding ourselves and cultivating our communities.

discourse on courses

“I learned to set the table before I could ride a bike. I learned that the knife blade should always point toward the plate, that the napkin should be folded so as to open in one shake, and dessert would follow each meal. I ate hamburgers in the summer; strawberries in June; deviled eggs around Easter with hot crossed buns; and in December, indulged on morsels reserved for ushering in the Holidays. Growing up with a “fellowship hour” meant eating out of duty, a styrofoam cup between you and uncomfortable silence. It seems we eat for a variety of reasons including acceptance. Food has been the timekeeper and the taskmaster; its role in life has preserved and dictated a certain socialness. I am drawn towards the roll of hostess and repelled by its serving nature. If there is a twelve-step program to shake sacrifice through service I should probably be in it.”

–– N. Schmidt Dotzauer

Jell-O molds, meatloaf, and twice-baked potatoes are a few of the basic potluck food groups that adorn Natalie Schmidt Dotzauer’s wallpaper installation this month at Punch.

PUNCH Gallery
May Hours: Noon-5 pm, Fri-Sun, or by appointment: art@punchgallery.org
PUNCH, 119 Prefontaine Place South, Seattle, WA 98104
www.punchgallery.org, (206) 621-1945