SpoonFed Art

ice cream +

I was flipping through a magazine the other day when I saw this really cute article on ice cream. I know... I sound like a 5-year old, right?!  But really, everything was just so pretty and well designed that after pondering for a while about how I could make my own version of these sweet little ice cream cupcakes, I decided I had to check out the master mind behind the design -
and boy what a treat!
It turned out to be Amy Atlas...
all I can say is she's a lady after my own heart..

♥

rainbow cake

If you know me, you know that I've been obsessed with this cake since I first saw it.  It makes me happy every time I think about it... I mean c'mon, it's a rainbow!
I first saw it on 19-year-old baking whiz Kaitlin, aka the
Whisk Kid's, blog... she's as cute as a button and clearly, a genius!  Since today's my birthday, I thought I'd give it a try...
(I'll let ya know how it goes...)

So here it is - it's a dreaded nighttime photo, but I think it turned out pretty good!  The recipe is here... it's basically a coconut cake minus the coconut.  The only change I made was to flavor the Swiss Meringue Buttercream with half vanilla and half lemon extract instead of all lemon... the combo is much more subtle, and vanilla and lemon together are just really yummy.  Also, most definitely buy the 4-pack of gel food coloring to color the layers... regular food coloring isn't as vibrant as the gels.  And be sure to mix your own orange and purple from the 4-pack... the individual orange and purple gels I bought separately turned out to be real duds.  It's a cake that takes a little time, but it's totally worth it... cutting into that perfectly white cake and seeing a bursting rainbow of color - you can't help but smile!

Enjoy your weekend!

august snow

...now that would be nice!  I'm actually in SC right now, and August is always super hot and humid.  I'm here looking for a house... they say this is the time to buy if you can (and I can't afford anything in LA!) so here I am.  I won't be back in LA until October but the the good news is that until it cools off here, I have air conditioning!  I'm really excited about this because working in the summer heat is no fun.  One of my friends said something the other day about Summer being her favorite season and while I do admit that I love some aspects of it,
it's definitely not mine!  I love Fall, and gave her a list of things that make Fall amazing, like:

...autumn leaves, cinnamon toast, parsnips & rosemary, tights, boots, jackets, jack-o-lanterns, candy apples, crisp, cool sunny afternoons, and pumpkin ravioli with sage brown butter! 
After making my case I started daydreaming about Fall, which sent me off looking around the web for when it's supposed to start to change seasons here and while I was searching,
I found this...

 

Isn't she beautiful?  She's a Currier & Ives lithograph from 1871.

Another wonderfully cool find in the midst of my autumn daydream - Mayfield snow cream.  Technically, I guess it's more of a winter daydream but who cares...
they're keeping me cool - hope you're keeping cool too!

 

birthday cake and a melody gin

Melody Gin - courtesy LA Times
Isn't it funny how you can go for days and days without a single interesting activity and then all of a sudden there's a massive deluge of stuff to do every night for weeks on end?!  Well that's what's been happening here lately, and I think it started with that trip to the opera... (wow, who knew a trip to the opera could do such a thing!)  There's way too much to detail here, so I'll just hit the highlights. After the opera, we spent several nights viewing films outdoors, 2 of which were at Hollywood Forever, where we picnicked and watched Hitchcock's "To Catch A Thief" one night and Richard Linklater's "Dazed and Confused" the next... it was so much fun...

 

Grace Kelly & Cary Grant in "To Catch A Thief"
(as projected on an outdoor wall)
...and then the next thing I knew... it was my birthday!

On the big day I had lunch at Chateau Marmont, which is now sort of a tradition, followed by an exciting day filled with good friends and happy celebrations.  I did the LACMA art walk at the Craft and Folk Art Museum on Saturday where I met some really cool fellow artists and crafters, and had just an all around great day. And on Sunday, some friends threw me a birthday party... and what a party it was!  Actually, it was a party for me, but it was also a Dewanatron show (slash) magic act (slash) interactive post-it-note-art-experience, complete with champagne flavored cake. wow.  And the whole shindig was covered by NYLON and the LA Times...


Brian Dewan, Rob Zabrecky, Tim Maloney - courtesy LA Times
(and check out that spoon art!)

Me, Rebecca Tull - courtesy LA Times

Brian Dewan, Me, Leon Dewan - courtesy Mark Blackwell

Syd Lynch - courtesy LA Times

Lisa Bae & friend- courtesy LA Times

Cake! - courtesy LA Times
It's about now, I imagine, that you've started wondering about the Dewanatron... a remarkable invention that you need to experience in person to order to fully appreciate.  Since we can't really do that here, I've posted the Times article below, which describes its
eloquence and uniqueness quite nicely.

Continuing the fun, the next day we had a SpoonFed Art photo shoot, so look for some new photos with a lovely new model and a new website design, all coming soon.  And to wrap up the extended SpoonFed Art/birthday/Dewanatron weekend, we watched "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey", an interesting little documentary about the inventor of the first electronic synthesiser instrument...



Last week was full of great adventures too, including an enchanting evening of magic and cabaret with my friend Rob Zabrecky, Handsome Jack, Derek DelGaudio and the incredibly lovely and talented Lindsay Benner.  It was my first time seeing Lindsay, and I was thoroughly thrilled... she was amazing. 
I was also lucky enough to be invited to a little comedy club located in an alley in Santa Moncia where I saw my friend
(and former SpoonFed Art model) Pamela Walt perform stand-up for the very first time... and she was great!  It most definitely takes talent and lots of guts to do stand-up, and Pamela has both - (way to go Pam!!!)

And so, after all of that, the NYLON Magazine party is tonight in Hollywood.  And there's even more coming up this week.  Whew... when it rains, it pours! 
 
 
*Shine on, Dewanatron*

By Dean Kuipers, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 1, 2009

If you've got a melody gin, it only takes two little musical tones to make a song, a really good party, or even a strange and ever-changing career as a musician. Sunday night at Ghettogloss gallery in Silver Lake, the duo known as Dewanatron made a rare appearance with their handmade instruments, pulled together a bunch of L.A.-based musicians and a birthday cake, and left the local hip-oisie gaping in wonder.

"Much like a cotton gin weaves together strands to make cloth, the melody gin weaves together a melody," explained Leon Dewan in between sets. One half of Dewanatron, Leon makes the "guts" of their handmade analogue electronic instruments, while his cousin Brian Dewan makes the cabinets. Leon's father was an inventor and worked with high-voltage equipment. "It's better to work with low-voltage, solid-state parts," nodded Leon, "and not risk death every day."

The Dewans' melody gins come in various sizes and shapes – some, like the Dual Primate Console, are too big to transport easily. Others are gallery installations or meant to hang on walls, where they generate tones on their own. Leon explained that the particular gin he was playing that night, which was about the size of an old reel-to-reel tape machine, generated sets of two toggling tones – up to sixteen total – that could then be modified with banks of knobs and dampening keys.

At full roar, the Dewanatron experience howled and warbled with demented mid-1960s fervor, all simple rhythms laced up with complex and freakish electronic wails, a retrofuturistic journey to the reinvention of the synthesizer.

The Dewans were joined by screenwriter Mark Blackwell on guitar; filmmaker Paul Yates on his own Dewan-built melody gin; bassist Jim Robbins; Drivin' n Cryin' drummer Jeff Sullivan; Tim Maloney on incidental violin, trumpet and guitar; plus other folks on electric dulcimers and found percussion, and Tommy Jordan banging spoons all over the place.

Spoons, in fact, were the motif of the evening, with silver spoons arranged on the walls, as the night also celebrated the birthday of Spoonfed Art proprietor Karin Collins. Her jewelry, based on spoons (www.spoonfedart.com), has been featured in about a zillion publications including Nylon, Health, Jane and L.A. Weekly, and is available at the Ghettogloss boutique.

Magician Rob Zabrecky, formerly in Silver Lake band Possum Dixon, even kicked the night off with a card trick and some illusions. Which were really good and worked even in lights so dim you could hardly see. What more do you want from a Sunday night?

a strawberry muffin morning

Hello!
I decided to treat myself this morning so I went by Joan's for
coffee and a strawberry muffin... man it was good! 
Things are shaking up here, both literally and figuratively!  We've had 3 earthquakes in a row now and I've been planning some changes that should shake things up even more...
(more on that later...)
Believe it or not, I'm off to get ready for a trip to the opera tonight... I've never been before so I don't really know what to expect... I'll definitely let you know how it goes -
and a big Happy Birthday to my sweet friend Ginny!
Hope your day was as spectacular as you are -
xoxo!

cherry, sichuan, ...van damme?

 

Hi!
I've been working on a project for a stylist for the last two weeks, but it's all finished up now and I'm ready to get back in the swing of things!  It's actually been a fun couple of weeks -
I had Sichuan food for the first time (prickly-ash, wow!),
we went to the Sam Cherry opening and saw his life's work (Bukowski, Black Cat, Skid Row), and (last but not least,)
I saw a strangely surprising film, JCVD.  
Never thought I'd be commenting on a Jean-Claude
Van Damme movie, but this little Belgian film is
pretty unique.  He plays himself, and you get a glimpse of what it might be like to be Jean-Claude Van Damme...
something I've never (even remotely) thought of. 
His soliloquy towards the end is revealing and seems so personal and real... if you have a spare evening,
it's really worth checking out... (really!)

I may be returning to ghost mode temporarily over the next couple of weeks... Unique is just around the corner, and I've been re-working some designs, like the one above... 
and gosh there's lots to do before the first of May!

Hope spring has sprung at your house and all is well...
see you soon!

a hodgepodge of deliciousness

It's overcast today, and a little bit chilly...
so when I started to think about lunch, all I could think about was soup!
And gee whiz, you can't have tomato (basil) soup without
(a heart-shaped) grilled cheese, can you?!

I also wanted to share some really great news!!~
I found out late Tuesday that I'll be at the
Spring Unique LA show on May 2nd & 3rd!

(details to follow...)
enjoy your afternoon!

henry, henry medicine man

I've been sick.
Achy, stuffy head, fever, sore throat... yuck.
I felt so icky yesterday that I made it classic movie Friday and just parked in front of the tv all day... and felt icky.
Here's what was playing...
To Sir, With Love
Double Indemnity
Mildred Pierce
and
The Postman Always Rings Twice
...movie magic, all of them!

I was still feeling bad when I got up this morning,
so I took two of these...



...and I feel much better! (well, at least a little better!)
That's my friend Mark holding the taco (or rather, his hand)...
he was kind enough to shoot this photo, as I was still feelin'
kinda poorly.
Anyway, if you'll remember, there was a grand debate about who has the best tacos, Henry's or Tito's...
and the verdict is...
I don't know!
They're both good in their own way... Tito's is it's own thing, and so is Henry's, which is lighter and crispier and much more subtle.  So maybe I'm a wimp for not choosing one or the other... all I have to say is that we're all very lucky to have a choice of two such wonderful tacos!
Okay, so I'm off to make a hot cup of tea... and lie down...
hope you're having a happy (and healthy) weekend!
ps...
I did perk up enough to shoot this amazing sign for the adjacent Starlite Room...

pie 'n burger

Pie 'n Burger has the best burgers (and pie!) 

in all of Los Angeles. 
Nope, I'm not into Apple Pan, even though it's old school (just like my beloved P'nB), and even though I'd really like to like a place called Apple Pan, the burger just isn't that great. 
Father's Office is quite something, and so is the brand spanking new Umami Burger on La Brea... both are super good, but it's good ol' Pie 'n Burger for me all the way! 
A friend and I went on a little thrify store excursion to Pasadena yesterday and I guess it was around 2:00-ish when she turned to me and said, "hey, are you hungry?  ..."pie 'n burger?" 
Oh yeah.  We were there in a flash... had to overcome a couple of obstacles to get there, but get there we did! 


(obstacle #1 - banana peel)

 
(obstacle #2 - we couldn't stop starring at the pink fluffy thing she bought at Goodwill)

Once happily inside, we each had a burger and split a piece of cherry pie... it was so good!

...the perfect start to the weekend!

a happy surprise from a jelly bean artist

Last night, after a very long day, one of those days (the kind that's topped off with a $53 parking ticket!), I came home to this happy little box, which was cleverly hidden away inside my refrigerator.  I almost cried... (okay, well maybe I did a little!)... and then I opened it up...



...tacos!
(from Tito's!)
You made my day... (you know who you are!)... thank you for such a sweet surprise!