Interview with Alice Waters
As published in the winter issue of the IMA’s Previews membership magazine

Q. What culture do you think has the most interesting relationship with food?
While I can only speak to the cultures I’ve visited, I find the Mediterranean culture of Southern Italy has a unique balance in their relationship with food. Food is part of the fabric of life there. It’s not on the side in the form of health or fueling up. It’s connected to meaningful everyday experiences. Sitting down at the table with family and friends is precious and important.

Q. What did you learn from your grandparents about food?
Not much. My grandparents were Irish English and it seemed to me that they liked to eat quite a lot, but that’s it. They had a narrow, limited diet. My parents were concerned about diet but didn’t know how to cook. My interest in food came from working in my parents’ Victory garden, and my passion came from traveling to France at the age of 19. The experience opened up a world to me.

Q. How are children in the Edible Schoolyard project transformed by food?
When kids are growing the food and cooking it themselves they build a sense of pride in what they are doing. When they serve it, they want to eat it, and their friends want to eat it. The ideas about food happen by osmosis. The values we talk about are absorbed by the kids in the process of working in the garden and kitchen. Science and history classes educate their senses and open their eyes to the world around them, not just to food.

Q. What’s the relationship between food and art?
You can set a table with flowers and cloth and it’s like magic. I think of art as magic. It nourishes us in beautiful ways that we can’t speak about. I see beauty as a way of caring. Both food and art offer the possibility of seeing the world in a different way.

The reason I’m interested in working with artists is to take food out of that ‘foody’ place and put it into the beauty of culture. Food is a universal language. We are digesting fast, cheap and easy. The consequences of the choices we make are destroying our world and our culture. I envision a place where an artist is curating the food. You would walk through a beautiful museum and food would be part of that experience.

Q. What artists inspire you?
Peter Sellars, Olafur Eliasson and Ann Hamilton – These artists have a way of surprising people and caring about the same set of values that I’m talking about.

Q. What’s in your refrigerator?
All the produce I brought back from a friend’s garden, jams given to me, milk, coffee, a bottle of Bandol Rose Wine, two small bottles of sweet wine from my daughter’s birthday, duck eggs, pickles, mustard, walnuts and hazelnuts, a couple lemons and Seltzer water.

Q. If you could be any food, what would you be and why?
It’s a toss up between being sweet like tomatoes or spicy like garlic.

Recipes from Alice Waters
If you are still unsure of what will dress the Thanksgiving dinner table tomorrow, try these recipes from the kitchen of Alice Waters.

In Tan’s composition “Ghost Opera”, part of the first concert presented in the IMA’s newly renovated Tobias Theater this Friday, gongs talk to splashing water (yes, water); stones talk to cymbals, and the breath of a monk talks to a Chinese lute (a pipa).  It’s going to be a visually stunning, dramatically lit piece in which the musicians won’t be sitting still.

Photo courtesy of Nana Watanabe

This event is the result of a collaboration between the IMA and the International Violin Competition of Indianapolis — an excellent partnership.  IVCI is selling the tickets for the November 21 performance, entitled Virtuosos & Visions—click here to get yours.

I’m hopeful we will not need a professional crying team here in the week before The Toby opens.  In the past month has been filled with the installation of an awesome sound system, 35mm projectors, and yesterday, a movie screen.  Last week we unpacked the Comfy Sacks, massive red bags filled with recycled packing material, that will probably be the most coveted seats in The Toby when we show a film.  Ushers will likely have to break up fights over who gets to sit in the Sacks.  Ushers also get to experience Toby events for free.  [Interested?  Go here].

If you come to the concert, feel free to reply to this post with comments.

Here’s to an auspicious beginning for the IMA’s Tobias Theater…

This winter, the IMA will debut Winter Nights, a counterpart to the IMA’s popular Summer Nights film series. Winter Nights will feature classic films with familiar names. All films will be screened in the IMA’s Tobias Theater (aka The Toby) which will open this fall. (Which means…unlike Summer Nights, the IMA will provide the seats AND climate control.)

Below are some of the films that you will get to see this winter on The Toby’s big screen:

• The Maltese Falcon (dir. John Huston, 1941, 101 mins, B & W)
• La Dolce Vita (dir. Federico Fellini, 1960, 180 mins, B & W)
• The Bank Dick (dir. Edward F. Cline, 1940, 72 mins B & W)
• Blade Runner: The Final Cut (dir. Ridley Scott, 1982, Color)
• The General (dir. Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton, 1927, 75 mins, B & W) with live accompaniment by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra.
• Lolita (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1962, 152 mins, B & W)

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL FOLKS! Back by popular demand – the IMA’s Film Poll. We want to know what you want to see. Polls close on July 18 and at that time the movie that has the most vote in each one of the categories below will be chosen for the 2009 Winter Nights Series. You can vote as often as you like, so vote every 15 minutes, every day or just once. It’s up to you, my friends!

Here are the categories:

AntiWestern/Revisionist Western/Acid Western (January 2)
AntiWestern, Revisionist, Acid. Call ‘em what you will, but these counter-culture Westerns favor realism over romanticisim.

Rough & Tumble Action Epic (January 30)
Nothing beats a great car chase. Except maybe deception, betrayal, gunfights, escapes and explosions. But no, nothing beats a great car chase.

French New Wave (February 6)
In true esprit de francais, New Wave directors snubbed their noses at classical cinema by experimenting with unique editing and narrative styles.