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Food: Gardening:
The
Gift of Insight When I was growing up in Curry County, 95 percent of the area was designated wilderness area. As teen-agers in Gold Beach, my friends and I threw ourselves against the sides of the cage and railed against the injustice of being raised in a town bereft of big city attractions.
After hightailing it out of Curry County the day after high school graduation, I could finally see the degradation of the landscape at large and knew that my experiences back home had been special and rare. A healthy environment affects the mental and physical health of the human and animal members who live in it, and for this reason among others, the work of New Zealand artist Barry Cleavin bears the gift of insight for Eugene. Barry Cleavin's prints are on display at the White Lotus Gallery through August. They are one of the no-cost activities remaining for you to do that will deliver more than the investment you make in time. Cleavin is a printmaker who uses many layers, colors, and viscosities of ink, as well as precise printmaking techniques, to masterfully express layers of opinion, conviction, questions, and feeling. He works in many ways and creates surfaces with great complexity and range. As a New Zealand artist, Cleavin allows us a glimpse of his perspective on his own world, as well as sharing invaluable perspective on our culture as an as an outsider looking in. He has participated in prestigious international invitational shows for the past 35 years. He is doing for us what he and others have done back home: showing that our will to connect as people through common challenges is stronger than our disparate communities. Cleavin shows the similarities between the impact of human immigration upon New Zealand's precious ecosystems and animal populations and the impact of bad leadership upon human relationships. The common ground in all relationships is the need to conduct those relationships without abusing power. Cassandra Fusco, a New Zealand art critic, notices, "He is not obsessed with the dark side of our natures, but acutely alert to visual and verbal connection and how these can comment on human absurdities." Cleavin does not judge how we conduct ourselves. He shares with us our common position in the world along with humor to manage some of the bitter truths. He asks some important questions about the wisdom of war and our interactions with other humans and other species. And Cleavin does this all successfully because of his technical mastery of drawing and print. One of the critics who writes regularly about this artist, T.L. Rodney Wilson, of the Auckland Museum, comments that Barry Cleavin addresses "the print as illustrator, the print in combination with words, prints plentiful and accessible, the print as agent of social commentary and opinion, in service of science, as descriptor, as definer…." Cleavin creates a mood and authority on his subject through technical proficiency. He accomplishes this by tapping into the tradition of scientific illustration in print. It is obvious that he has an intense love and loyalty of nature. He sometimes talks about threatened or extinct species and uses anatomically correct simian and avian skeletons from museum exhibits. He places skeletons and other images in peculiar ways. The interplay between literature and visual art is also a central theme in Cleavin's work. He uses word phrases, visual and verbal puns, palindromes, and literary references to reinforce his visual offerings. He tries to convey something unique about our "location" in time and history. Barry Cleavin is an artist with great insight onto the vulnerability of all life. At this time in history, when resources are dwindling, we could use some this insight to inform our own choices.
Sublimity
in the Suburbs KoHo
Bistro When KoHo Bistro first opened, I have to admit I thought it looked like a recipe for disaster. The location was obscure, in a semi-defunct mall out on Bailey Hill, and the menu was gourmet, not geared at all toward the high school crowd across the street at Churchill. Now, over three years later, I have to admit I was wrong: Somehow, beautifully and with simple elegance, it works. From the bleak mall outside, the place feels like a cozy, sophisticated secret escape. The space inside is small, but carefully designed, and ends up feeling more casual and homey rather than formal or pretentious. Professional and warmly courteous servers find tables and dole out heavy, leather-bound menus. Each table, the night I ate, was started with a plate of crispy fried green olives, and a basket of bread. The bread was amazing, made in-house every morning, crusty on the outside and tenderly cakelike on the inside. It's enough to swear off the low-carb diet for good. KoHo also makes its own pasta, which I'll have to try next time. The menu changes seasonally, though the basics remain — salmon and seafood, pork, steak, a vegetarian entree, plenty of salads. KoHo features a salad of the day, from Hay Bales! farm, and a wonderful Caesar salad (with croutons made from that same wonderful bread, if I'm not mistaken.) I started my meal with the Obsidian Stout Battered Brie, tantalizing because it sounded so contradictory. Beer and cheddar, maybe; brie and wine, sure. But beer and brie? However, my doubts were again unfounded — it worked perfectly. The enchantment began when the plate was set down. It looked like a Netherlands' still life. Gleaming colors and textures, such as crisp, bright green apples, golden buttery crackers, shiny black huckleberries and blueberries accented the wedge of cheese encased in its delicate, meringue-like shell. The brie was wonderful on its own, and tasty with the fruit. However, water crackers might have matched better with an already slightly oily cheese like brie. When the entrees arrived, the amount of food on the table was a little staggering. Heaps of food covered the plates, and the plates covered almost all the table's surface area. The normal trade-off between quality and quantity doesn't seem to exist here. Mountains of food, with impeccably fresh ingredients and high-quality standards make this place unique. And even reasonably priced: dinner for two came in around $40, including tip, drinks, and enough take-home for a nice lunch the following day. Other restaurants in town with comparable local and high-quality ingredients charge quite a bit more. The summer soup is a tomato gazpacho, which comes with or without mussels. Gazpacho can be a million different things to a million different chefs. Here at KoHo it is simple to the point of plain, blended and smoothly zesty with garlic and onion. It is served with an island of diced cucumbers and waves of avocado sauce: beautiful. The portion was way too much for me, especially with such a strongly flavored soup. Next time I'll just order a cup. Brown sugar smoked Greener Pastures chicken also landed on the table, with a wonderful German-styled potato salad, filled with diced veggies, light and sweet, and grilled veggies. Everything was cooked to perfection. Dessert had to be tasted too, of course. I eavesdropped on a table behind me and was all set to order the Napoleon, but it wasn't being served that evening. The choices were another list of homemade decadences: ice creams, cookies, cake, strawberry créme brûlée. The brûlée is almost always impossible to resist, especially if it's got a new twist. Strawberry qualifies, and I ordered it. The custard was sweet and creamy, sweeter than traditional, but a dark, almost burnt sugar on top compensated and balanced the flavors nicely. KoHo's new first sous chef, Nicole Peltz, is fresh from school, but not new to the restaurant. She was hired on as a kitchen assistant in the summer of 2000, just a month after Kim and Kevin Hyland opened the restaurant. She enjoyed her experience so much she went pro at the New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, VT. During her studies she interned at Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, two of Chicago's most successful restaurants. Her skills are obvious and meld well with the wonderful atmosphere KoHo has constructed so carefully in its corner of the suburban jungle. In
the Pink
It happens every year. Just when it seems that summer will last forever, there appears in the garden a small reminder that it won't. It's a little like the occasional creak in a joint that reminds us of our own mortality, although more welcome. The new arrival In the garden is Cyclamen hederifolium. Right now there are just a few isolated flowers, emerging from dust-dry ground. By the end of August there will be hundreds more, to be followed later in the year by a ground-covering carpet of pretty, silver-marbled leaves that will last all winter. This easiest of the little hardy cyclamen is the first of several surprises in pink. Late August brings the imposing belladonna lily (Amaryllis belladonna), a slimmed-down, hardy version of the indoor amaryllis. By September there will be many kinds of colchicum. (Colchicum are often called autumn crocus because the flowers bear a superficial resemblance to crocuses. This is confusing because there are also true crocuses that bloom in fall.) Like cyclamen, colchicum and belladonna spring suddenly from bare ground without leaves, giving rise to names like naked boys, naked ladies and resurrection lily. The dilemma with fall-blooming bulbs and corms is that they need space and light both in fall (so you can appreciate the flowers) and in spring, when the foliage is in full growth. As a result they don't mix well with perennials or over-vigorous ground cover plants, or even bulky annuals that may still going strong in August and September. On the other hand, the bulbs don't need much summer water, so they are perfectly adapted to yards that have unirrigated areas. Hardy cyclamen are easiest to accommodate, because they flourish among the roots of greedy trees (maples and birches, in my yard) where hardly anything else will grow. Rooty, shaded ground is inhospitable even to weeds, so a light layer of compost or shredded leaves is all it takes to prepare the ground for their arrival. Belladonna lilies need sun, but as they bloom on two-foot stems they will do well enough in a carpet of verbena, or even a bed of catmint or lavender. Where drainage is good, they won't object to some irrigation. Colchicum are harder to place because their leaves are considerably taller than the flowers. You can plant them in an area of low ground cover like vinca (occasionally mown when it grows too thick), lamium or ajuga. Better still, put them in an area of rough grass (along with wild iris and native bulbs, perhaps) and be sure you mow it in late July or early August. Well-established clumps can bloom for weeks. In spring, the leaves have plenty of time to ripen before the grass overtakes them. "Ripen" is, of course, a euphemism for dying. Some people make an awful fuss about dying bulb foliage, and in the case of big-leafed colchicum they have a point. If you are impatient with daffodil or tulip leaves as they make their exit, colchicum may not be the plant for you. Even if you have some tolerance for withering leaves, you may consider rough grass or ground cover the ideal location for the common kinds of colchicum that get handed from neighbor to neighbor, while you reserve a few prominent spots in the garden for more exciting varieties. A few of these have flowers with a strange, checker-board pattern that botanists call tessellation. There is some of this pattern in 'Violet Queen.' Others emerge almost without color, then gradually turn rose pink or close to purple. It takes sun to bring out the strongest coloring. Colchicum 'Giant' is a strong, reliable variety with large, cupped flowers in lavender pink. Double-flowered 'Waterlily' is strangely attractive, with many narrow petals that are closer to lilac-purple. In spite of words like lilac and violet in catalog descriptions, colchicum are mostly pinkish. So what if pink is not your color? There are a few white colchicum. The most beautiful is C. speciosum 'Album,' but it increases slowly and is difficult to find. C. autumnale has a pretty, heavy-blooming white variety with small flowers only 4 inches high. It is said to have a double-flowered white variant, but I have never seen it. Later in fall come true crocus, some of which are definitely bluish, but they are more of a challenge to grow well in our rainy climate. And there's a cheery yellow crocus look-alike, Sternbergia lutea, that is easy if you can find it a spot with fast drainage and plenty of fall and winter sun. It is a little late to order colchicum from mail-order catalogs, but you will find the big, shiny brown corms at some garden centers and farmers' markets. Plant them with only an inch of soil over them, in ground that won't be water-logged in winter. Rachel Foster of Eugene is a garden writer and consultant. She can be reached at rfoster@efn.org
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