Palo Alto Art Center Opens Juried Exhibition Continuing Theme of Food
Published on June 11, 2024
What’s Cookin’? Concludes Year-Long Series Featuring Work from Throughout Northern California
Images from left to right: Chung-Fen Schildan, Overindulgence, 2024, Collage on paper, 7 x 9 in.; Paulette Phlipot, Romanesco and Greens Mandala, 2017, Photograph printed on metal, 40 x 40 in., Courtesy of the artist; Kent Manske and Nanette Wylde, Preserves, 2015, Plywood, paint, tags, string, 4 x 8 ft., Courtesy of the artists
PALO ALTO, CALIF.--The Palo Alto Art Center presents the What’s Cookin’? Art about food, culture and community exhibit June 22-Aug. 18, 2024, the last in the year-long series focused on the power of food to connect us to identity, culture, and each other. Featuring the work of 60 artists from throughout Northern California, the exhibition showcases a broad range of artistic responses to food, through work in photography, painting, installation, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, and digital media.
Our lives are structured around eating and are reflected in the diverse food we eat. Food provides not only sustenance, but also a defining sense of culture and identity to us all. While food has always been synonymous with celebration and gathering, it is also inextricably linked to more challenging issues around income inequality, gender norms and biases, human consumption and waste, health, the environment, and labor. With human life and culture centered around eating, it is no wonder that the foods we eat not only provide a strong sense of identity and community, but also intersect with many of the important issues facing the world today.
In conjunction with What's Cookin'?, Palo Alto-based interdisciplinary artist Martha Sakellariou created Revolution is a Dinner Party, an installation that challenges ideas around domesticity and identity. Sakellariou investigates the potential of the dinner party to spark conversation, connection, action, and even a revolution. Sakellariou reminds us of the role of domestic spaces as sites of dialogue, action, and social change for women throughout history. She encourages us to sit down at the table in the middle of the space, engage with friends and strangers, and start to imagine our own change in the world.
More about What’s Cookin’? Art about food, culture and community exhibit
Juror Greg Flood selected the 60 artists out of hundreds of submissions. He explained, “Jurying this exhibition was a real treat. The artists who applied submitted wonderful works from a variety of viewpoints about their relationship to food. It was difficult to select the works to be included, but those that were represent the complex and diverse nature of food and food culture in the United States today.”
Artists in the exhibition include: Yusser Al-Qazwini; Hila Amram; Brandin Barón; Amanda Bristow; Heidi Brueckner; Tachiya Bryant; Julia Cardenas; Tania Cardenas; Saranya Chandrasekaran; Dotti Cichon; Colby Claycomb; Aina Clotas; Eric Cowger; Lauren Crasco; Adriane Dedic; Rose Easterbrook; Kim Frohsin; Erik Garcia; Luis-Genaro Garcia; Glish Group (Timofey Glinin & Anastasia Shubina); Omar Harb; Susan Harding; Xiao He; Susan Murillo Helmer; Sandra Iraheta; Roston; Alyssa Karlin; Jessica Kwong; Richard and Judith Selby Lang; Jennifer Lay; Siqui Li; Carey Lin; Helena Ljoljic; Rayos Magos; Melissa Mahoney; Kent Manske and Nanette Wylde; Blair Migdal; Fateme Mokhles; Michael (MWIN) Nguyen; Kathi Peverini; Paulette Phlipot; Barbara Pollak-Lewis; Kaory Santillán Bueno; Jan Schachter; Chung-Fen Schildan; Ronit Shalem; Anna Sidana; Irene Suh; Carolyn Tillie; Zhanna Urodovskikh; Fe Villanueva; Ming Jing (Mike) Wang; Michelle Waters; Moose Wesler; Nancy Willis; Jee Wipperfurth; Dan Woodard.
Greg Flood is the dynamic new Director of Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco. A lifelong Bay Area resident, Flood became interested in art while still in high school and went on to earn degrees in Art Studio and Art History from Sonoma State University. While still finishing his degrees, he began a three-year internship at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art in Napa, as part of the curatorial department. He would later become an art writer and critic for Examiner.com before joining Brian Gross Fine Art in 2015, where over the course of eight and a half years he rose to the position of Associate Director. In April 2023, he was appointed Director of Paul Thiebaud Gallery. In addition to his gallery work, Flood curated exhibitions at a.Muse Gallery in San Francisco and at the Art Gallery at Santa Rosa Junior College.
FREE OPENING RECEPTION PUBLIC PROGRAMS PRESENTED AT THE PALO ALTO ART CENTER TO SHOWCASE WHAT’S COOKIN'?
Friday Night at the Art Center opening reception—Friday, June 21, 6-8 p.m., FREE:
Celebrate What’s Cookin’? with the artists and juror Greg Flood! The event will feature hands-on artmaking opportunities and a cash bar with specialty food-inspired cocktails provided by the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation. A special performance in conjunction with Revolution is a Dinner Party will take place at 7 p.m. Palo Alto Art Center Foundation members are invited to a special preview at 5 p.m.
To register, follow the link here: https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/Events-Directory/Community-Services/Whats-Cookin-FNAC
About the Palo Alto Art Center:
The Palo Alto Art Center is your place to see and make art, activate your creativity, and expand your community. Created by the community, for the community in 1971, the Palo Alto Art Center provides an accessible and welcoming place to engage with art. We serve approximately 150,000 people every year through a diverse range of programs.
The Palo Alto Art Center, Division of Arts and Sciences, Community Services Department, City of Palo Alto is funded in part by grants from the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation. The Palo Alto Art Center Foundation gratefully acknowledges support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Skyline Foundation, the Palo Alto Community Fund, Acton Family Giving, private donations, and members.
Whats-Cookin-Press-Release.pdf(PDF, 633KB)