Some fun Weekend Events this Saturday

There's couple of fun things going on this weekend....plus the weather is supposed to be nice!!

1. HENRY ART GALLERY:
Champagne Truffle: Henry Gift Shop project #6 (the final project)

Tea Party reception, March 27, 2-4:30pm, open now through April 11

Champagne Truffles with Maki Tamura, Nicholas Nyland, Jennifer Campbell, Ian Toms and me, Saya Moriyasu. 5 artists along with Matthew Offenbacher transformed the space with wallpaper, live webcam of a cat colony, videos and precious belongings. Feel free to come and hang out in the space, eat lunch, watch the kitties and write in the journal.

Henry Art Gallery
University of Washington
15th Ave NE and NE 41st
Seattle, WA 98195
(206)543-2280 phone

2. HIAWATHA ARTIST PLACE:
Spring Open House with 4 floors of resident artists, 3 bands and food & drinks to keep you happy!

Open House, March 27, 2-8pm

peruse the Hiawatha Artists Lofts open studios 3pm-6pm

mingle with the 60+ residents & their neighborhood

support the Hiawatha Artists in their first annual silent auction 3pm-6pm

listen to one resident musician & two visiting bands from S. California & Portland 6:30pm-8:10pm

check out the little café that caffienates our residents....amongst our other neighboring specialty businesses

enjoy the new neighborhood developments as we can walk freely down a beautiful new sidewalk

share a yellow truck from Georgetown called H A L L A V A....yes bring your cash, they will be here from 2pm until the food runs out!

Jackson Place Community, Hiawatha Artist Loft
843-855 Hiawatha Place South
Seattle, WA, 98144

Eat My Story Report Part II

At long last we get to our wrap up post on the latest greatest Brite event: Eat My Story.
Let me just start by saying this without a doubt this was most the delicious Brite event thus far. True, this was not so hard to do with Seattle pizza powerhouse Via Tribunali graciously hosting the event plus the creative (albeit amateur) culinary skills of all the event's participants. For every part deliciousness, Tricia Martin of Eating is Art and Food Loyal (her new venture!) added equal parts fascination, experience, and social interaction with her big picture concept:

How can a pizza tell a story?
The rules were simple (and the results awesome...more on that later):

• Share a short story with the group (150 words or less).
• Pick and bring pizza ingredients to the event that will tell you story.
• Come to Via Tribunali the day of the event. Pick someone else's story at random.
• Interpret that person's story on the pizza using their ingredients (adding or subtracting as necessary)...lotsa room for creativity here.
• Cook your creation to perfection at 1000 degrees F in Via Tribunali's wood fired oven.
• Share your the story and pizza with group...drink vino...converse...revel...enjoy.

To shake things up a bit, we added an improv edition at the last minute for those unprepared without stories. These were short stories, quotes, limericks, even tweets chosen at random from a hat.
The results were amazingly beautiful and delicious as well as accurate at telling their corresponding stories. Here's the play-by-play of the day: It was a perfect pizza day at lovely Georgetown (south Seattle). Via Tribunali was the perfect spot for the event with lots of rustic charm and "little slice of Italy" feel. The space was perfect: a long communal table and plenty of room to make some mess.

In true Brite style, Jean laser-cut some signs in cardboard and of course made Brite merit badges for each participants...neatly arranged at the sign in table. As people began too arrive, the ingredients table turned into a cornucopia of amazing ingredients. Everything from heirloom tomatoes to grapes to pork belly to chocolate and everything in between.
Tricia handmade and illustrated these amazing peels for every pizza including cute drawings of each ingredient and the story of the pizza.
Once we were situated, Via Trib brought out the wine and a parade of their signature pies and anti-pasti plates. Leonardo, their GM (and a real Italian of course) introduced us to the history of the resturant, telling the colorful story only as a true Italian can with great expressive hand gestures. We learned how pizza began, it's importance to Italian culture, and how Via Trib's owners had a dream of bringing that to Seattle, decided to buy a defunct pizzeria in Naples, shipped it here, and started their very own Napolian pizzeria right here in Seattle.

We were ready to leave our own mark. Everyone set out to work preparing their incredients and working out the details of their interpretations. There was a healthy buzz around the room as people shared their stories as well as their ingredients and offered eachother ideas and support. Go team! You could see the creative concoctions taking shape:

Jean was trying to make sense of the variety of purple ingredients in front of her.

Christa carefully cut up her ingredients to try to mimic the farm fields when seen from air.
Andrew was contemplating what would happen to Tortilla chips at 1000 degrees.
Chika was confidently crafting a pizza loosely based on a poor Elvis impersonation... Leonardo and his staff carefully showed us how work dough into a thin-crusted pie letting us try and succeed in some way, shape, or form in making our own vessels for our stories. 3 at a time we went to the dough station to try our hand at it and artfully arranging our ingredients.
Roughly 2 minutes after plunging each pizza into the via tribunali inferno, the group was blessed with steaming hot pizza...charred perfectly around the edges. Triumphantly, the pizza makers would reenter the dining hall proudly presenting their creations. After a photo op, each pizza had it's story read aloud to the group then we dug in. It was amazing just how much more each story resonated after tasting the pizza and going through the whole ritual Tricia had orchestrated. I've never tasted so many different types of pizzas in my life! I think everyone went home and took a pizza nap after the event, and some leftovers, too.

Next post will have all the stories and the individual pizzas!

Here is where you can see ALL hundred+ of yummy looking photos of the event!

Eat My Story Report:Part I

This last Saturday, Brite's collaboration with Tricia Martin of Eating is Art went super well! The event, EAT MY STORY:Make a Pizza, Tell A story, had a great turn out. Besides making and tasting some (actually A LOT) of pizzas, everyone also enjoyed some fantastic house wine, as well as delicious Via Tribunali appetizers donated to us.
Tricia made these wonderful individual pizza peels for each story submitted. It had the story, and all ingredients drawn on there. It made the experience that much more special.
Tricia is super diligent and did her homework of updating about the event already. So here are some photos from her. I'll have more updates later and TONS of delicious looking photos. Stay tuned.Everyone making their own dough. It's totally harder than it looks!
we got to taste 20+ never been tried pizza flavors!!
Plum jam+quince pizza/ peanut butter+almond butter+honey+apple pizza/ huevo ranchero pizza/ heirloom ketchup pizza/ pork belly+lotus root +cilantro oil pizza/ chocolate+coco nibs + habanero peppers pizza, ....and more.Stay tuned!

BRITE Event: Eat My Story with Tricia Martin

I'm SUPER excited to say that we (Brite Collective) and Tricia Martin of Eating Is Art are hosting an event this Saturday, Oct 3rd. EAT MY STORY: Make a Pizza to Tell a Story!
I've been looking forward in having Tricia come up from Portland to do a food event ever since I discovered her work in May. So I'm thrilled to see it all happening!
The over concept of the event is pretty simple:
Every participant are to come up with a story as well as the ingredients for their pizza. The ingredients could have personal memories, cultural references, texture, history, smell, color, etc. The pizza could be savory, sweet, or in a shape of a pet! The possibilities are practically endless!

Then on Saturday October 3rd, all the participants will gather at Via Tribunali in Georgetown to do a whole make/share/eat pizza feast! Wine will of course be part of it the equation. Doesn't it just sound horrible?

On top of that, Tricia is making special pizza peel for each story! She's always so thoughtful and playful with all of the event she does. From the invitation, to the table setting and to the actual food itself...she considers all aspect to the experience that really makes each event feel really special.
I'm SO looking forward to it!We're also incredibility thankful that Via Tribunali is being so generous by providing the venue and also letting as use their awesome brick oven to make pizzas....the right way.
They're famous Napolian style pizza is absolutely delectable, and they're really the closest to the actual ones we've had in Italy. Don't let Pizza Hut fool you...

We still have few spots available, and you can still RSVP. So if you're in Seattle and would like to join us, please submit your story and ingredients (in less than 150 words) to tricia@eatingisart.com.
Get on it! Chop chop!!

Events: Urban Planning with Sieverts

There's a series of really interesting events happening in Seattle this week from July 1st-3rd concerning the idea of urban planning specifically in Seattle and Burien. Occasioned by Thomas Sieverts, there will be discussions, film showings, and exhibits surrounding this topic.

Suddenly Presents: Seattle and Burien, July 1-3, 2009

Our cities surprise and confound us by scrambling the categories we
use to plan and understand them. At once dense and sprawling, crowded
and empty, urban but centerless, dynamic and stalled, the landscape
where we live defies planning and leaves us with little grasp of its
meanings or pleasures. Yet it is the product of our choices,
individually and as a public: we live here now. So, what can we make
of it? Suddenly will bring art and food and public conversation to
bear on the common cause of making meaning and life in the landscape
where we live now — as it is, as we are, as best we can.

We're thinking of checking these events below:

Wednesday July 1
7:30 pm “Urban Aesthetics,” lecture by Thomas Sieverts (at Town Hall, 1119 8th Ave., Seattle, $5 suggested donation)

Friday July 3: (if you can splurge...this dinner sounds really amazing)
Corridor Project closing dinner at 6pm hosted by Michael Hebb,with Matthew Stadler and Thomas Sieverts in conversation, including a celebration of “suddenly: where we live now, the visual chronicle;” (see www.onepot.org for details). It's $40 for the dinner
The documentation of the Corridor Project IIII: Habitat: will be on display. The opening of the Exhibition is open to the public and begins at 9pm in Occidental Plaza in Pioneer Square.
Corridor Project IIII is an exploration of the wilderness and landscape of the Interstate 5. Michael Hebb, Hannes Wingate and Michael McManus discovers what it means to live, eat, and create a habitat for 3 days in one of the freeways generous median areas. (crazy!!)

Ctrl+Alt+DESIGN Recap

So Finally! Went through all the photos we took...all 200+ of them! Phew!!
You can see the crowd and the space at Ouch My Eye. The sun lit room made the space look even more amazing. Here's all the designs that were at the show. Remember, the show will be up through July, 12th, and the gallery will also be open late for First Thursday Art Walk on July 2nd.
Above: Graypants , Grain, Elisa WerblerAbove: Frame Lamp by Iacoli & McAllister, Paper Flower Shade by Lit, Peep Show Shade by Andrea Claire, Scrap by Graypants, Porcailine shade by Heath Bultman.Above: Pedestals by Iacoli & McAllister, Ceramic Cans by Jason Neufeld, Doily Clock by Stanley Ruiz, Hookup by Fruitsuper Design, "Pour"by Elisa Werbler, Recycled leather sculpture by Submaterial. Necklaces by Stanly Ruiz, Wood & Corian rings by Iacoli & McAllister, Cryon Rings by Timothy Liles, Cinder Block necklace by Kiel Mead.
Hairpiece, and mirror necklaces by FortyFive-09.Above are some of the figures I made for the Chalk-It-To-Me Series along with the Buddha figure and Piggy Bank. I provided bunch of various colored chalk and people went crazy on all the Chalk-It-To-Me figures. It was fun to see the progression of what people drew as the night went on. As you can see that what used to be the handsome black panther got turned into a drag queen panther.... Good times. :D
I especially enjoyed the art installations and art work by (knee shy). They have a wonderfully analytical, but humorous way of commenting about the audacity of our everyday behaviors and interactions. They didn't begin working on their piece until arriving in Seattle allowing their journey here to inspire them to document a movement of their own creation: O.N.W.A.R.D: Our Nation Want Airport Re-Design. Their installed piece mocked humanity's futile efforts to improve airports by adding things like bad art and crappy shopping to our air travel experiences. Pretty funny stuff.
Brite Collective has a section in the show with all the Brite Lites are displayed. It was fun to see them again in the gallery context and I think it got a lot of people curious and interested in it! Become a Brite Collective facebook fan and get all our updates plus other design-related Seattle happenings!
More of Tricia's Bread Friend Map. It was even more impressive to see the bread board that she had someone custom made for her. I love all the adorable playful doodles that people did through out the map, too!
There's seriously too many photos! You can see MORE on our Flickr!