Hey ya'll, so Questlove, the drummer from the Roots and other assorted titles put out a book about chefs and art about a year ago. I'm in the middle of reading it, and I just heard that it received a James Beard Award Nomination, which is the most prestigious culinary judging organization in America... I connect with this in a few ways...
-Around this time last year I was working at The Bachelor Farmer with Paul Bergland when he and they earned their nomination, and subsequent win of the Best Midwestern Chef Award.
-Questlove and I are both drummers... and food enthusiasts/cooks.
The premise of the book, 'something to food about- exploring creativity with innovative chef's' is covered in this article from eater.com. "What is creativity? How are art and food related? What does the future hold for food and cooking?"
http://www.eater.com/2016/4/11/11389740/questlove-book-somethingtofoodabout-chef-quotes
I'm only half way through the book... but there is a lot to rethink.... I've been working on writing a screenplay for a few years and I'm starting to look at the restaurant world like a film production. The production team itself is like the back of house, with the writers (farmers), director (chef), and all other forms of the crew from Director of photography to the Post Production crew mirroring the prep and line cooks. And the servers and front of house are obviously the actors, the most forward facing part of the experience the audience can interact with.
Daniel Patterson - "I don't really think of cooking as an art form. I think of it as a craft. I think that what we do is more like building furniture or building a masonry wall. If you do it well, if you spend time learning, you can eventually do something that's artistic as well as functional. But there's still a distinction. To me, art is something that's removed from our basic sustenance, whereas food is is something that's linked to it."
But the distinction between art and craft... where does that come in? I don't know if there has to be one... I love that this premise is being examined by a drummer, the integral but albeit the most back of house of the musicians. There's a kind of heavy humbleness that comes with these back of house roles. But I'm thinking now about how we value art v.s. craft in American culture. Craft is a little looked down on in some way, because it resembles a machine... am I right? A lot of repetition? Like a drummer lol. But being able to channel unique characteristics into each of those repetitive moments, is that not art? So is Art just an evolution of craft?