Week 11 - Tattfoo Tan Studio Visit

This week we went on a field trip to visit the studio of Tattfoo Tan.


Introductions, group discussion of Tattfoo's work and Q&A session.






Tattfoo's syllabus books for some of his projects:

• New Earth Resiliency Training Module
• Nature Matching System
• Sustainable. Organic. Stewardship. Action Guide

Students explore the studio


Next the students learned how to make raspberry jam with help from Tattfoo.







 




Finished jam before sealing jars.




Boiling jars to create vacuum seal.



Tattfoo shows the class how to make fire. Image by Syndey Kaye.


Daniel, Rob, Boyan and Zihong give it a try.






Tattfoo shows some of his preserved foods and milkweed from his garden




Tattfoo and students give each other tarot card readings from a customized deck of Tattfoo's desgin.

HOMEWORK / FOR NEXT TIME

We have the week of Thanksgiving off from class and the following week, 11/30 we will have our pre-final critique.

Everyone should have something to show.

Bring as much as you can toward the finished version of your final projects including prototypes, first iterations, a dry run of a performance, etc. It should be more than sketches or ideas at this point. This is a great opportunity for you to get in-progress feedback from your professors and peers.

Week 10 - Food Waste, Agnes Varda's Gleaners, Individual Meetings

This week we discussed food waste, watched Agnes Varda's The Gleaners and I and had individual meetings about students' final projects.

HOMEWORK

There is no new homework for this week other than catching up on blog work for those that are missing assignments and working on your final projects.

Remember we will have our pre-final critique the class session after next on November 30 (the week after Thanksgiving.)

NEXT WEEK - 11/16

Next time we will be taking a field trip to the studio of Tattfoo Tan in Staten Island (see online syllabus or email Sally and Kirby for the address if you were not in class 11/6.)

Please be on the 3:30pm STATEN ISLAND FERRY.

Note: that is the time the ferry DEPARTS so please leave yourself extra time otherwise you'll have to wait a half hour for the next ferry and be very late.

Info on getting there. We will try to meet everyone on the ferry so we can walk to the studio together.

Week 9 - Foraging with Wildman Steve Brill

This week we took a foraging tour with Wildman Steve Brill and his daughter Violet.

Then we returned to the classroom to cook with the things we found in the park using some of Steve's recipes.


Wildman Steve Brill shows us garlic mustard which has leaves that taste like garlic with bitter overtones and a root with a horseradish taste.




Violet tells us about common plantain


Violet scales a tree to gather small twigs and branches of the black birch, which has a wintergreen taste and is used as the base flavor for Steve's stick pudding recipe


Sydney shows off her pokeweed berries which are NOT for eating as they are poisonous but can be used to create ink. According to Steve, the ink used to sign the Declaration of Independence was made from poke berries.



Back at school Steve guides us in making some of his famous vegan recipes from the plants we have just foraged.



Students snack on roasted ginkgo nuts harvested from inside fallen fruit of a ginkgo tree. The nuts were surprisingly good which is impressive as the flesh of the ginkgo fruit is poisonous and foul-smelling.


A delicious lentil creation which incorporated violets, burdock and some of the other greens we foraged


Boyan works on the stick pudding which uses the black birch twigs as its base flavor.


Our meal was supplemented by a tasty sassafras tea created by boiling sassafras root with water to give a root beer-like flavor.


Some of Steve's many books on foraging, plant identification and cooking.

HOMEWORK + CLASS on 11/9

Many of you have not completed last week's proposal for the final project, which was due last week. If you have not completed ALL parts required as detailed in the final project handout, please make sure that is completed by next week.

If you have already completed your final proposal there is no new homework, just get to work on your final project.

Next week, 11/9, we will have a short lecture on food waste and introduce the work for Tattfoo Tan whose studio we will visit the following week on 11/16. We will also watch a movie on Gleaners and have individual meetings  during class time to discuss your midterm grades and final project ideas.