Jul 13

Jul 13 Lexie Smith

What did you have for lunch?
Today I am in South Florida with some friends. I ate a haphazard collection of snacks for lunch, including my first taste of watermelon this year, dehydrated star fruit from earlier in the season, mulberries just ripped off a tree, and something promising to be "Giant Peruvian Inca Corn," but more succinctly could be called "really big corn nuts".

What was the last gift you gave someone?
A fish I caught, to my boyfriend, to eat for dinner tonight.

How do you mix art and baking in your life?
Fortunately, mixing the two has finally begun to happen organically. I find the same things inspiring for everything I make, whether or not that thing is edible, so it all cycles out from the same place, and there's not always a clear line between food and art making. It also helps that visual art and baking are both hinged on creative problem solving, because they aid one another in enhancing skills vital to that. The main issue I have in the confluence of the two is time. Baking takes up a lot of time and energy. If I'm devoted to it in the way I am right now (I've just started my own business), it leaves little time for anything else, especially illustration, animation and wood sculpture, which all take tons of time on their own. For now it's bread, and the stained parchment paper it leaves behind. Though, I do also really enjoy using food in kind of surreal "still lives" and installations, which I make because I think they're funny, and because food gets to be a mostly visual prop. I feel like humor is sorely underrepresented in the food world. Everyone takes themselves very seriously, like they do in the art world as well. I think the same edge of sardonic play runs between the food I make and the art I make, because both those worlds kind of bum me out without it.

Favourite smell?
I love the smell of the dusty old central air vents in the house I grew up in. The first time the air came on meant it was summer. Freshly baked bread is an obvious tie for first- sourdough especially, and Cuban oregano is pretty special also. Though, a lover's sweat is ultimately hard to beat.