This article originally appeared in our September 2015 print issue.

There are two questions everyone asks in Washington: What do you do and where are you from?

The first question is generally pretty easy for me: I’m a journalist-turned-consultant. It’s the second one that always trips me up a bit. DC is a place built on people whose identity is not from here. There are the midwesterners who smile too much, the Texans who wear cowboy boots with their suits every day, the southerners who fight over barbeque and football, and the Californians who just want everyone to chill out a little bit.

The fact is, I’d never really considered myself a New Englander until I had to move away to a place that asks me, regularly, to pick a regional identity. Massachusetts never really works on its own, because people always assume Boston—and let me tell you, I am NOT from Boston. I grew up sandwiched between Vermont and Connecticut, and sometimes I’d drive to New Hampshire to buy alcohol on Sundays.

My family moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, when my father took a job at a fledgling (and short-lived) magazine based in the Pioneer Valley. When that folded, he resumed working for publications in New York City; but my mother, understanding what a magical place we had found, refused to move us. Dad was thus banished to many years of commuting via the Springfield train station.

And so I got to grow up as a New Englander, without really ever understanding what that meant. I got to see Ella Fitzgerald sing at Tanglewood when I was very young. Kurt Vonnegut once performed with some members of Phish at an arts fundraiser (no big deal, right?). I was surrounded by writers and artists and thinkers practically all the time. The mountains were bright red and orange in the fall, and the secret watering holes were refreshing in the humidity of summer. A really good therapist was easy to come by, as was the best ice cream you could ever eat.

I was so spoiled by my surroundings that I barely noticed them until I left. I arrived in New York in 2007, shortly after graduating college with no money and no real direction. I worked for Trader Joe’s in Union Square stocking shelves and suppressing rage at customers. I moved on to working as an assistant to a fairly bizarre real estate broker and then to the front desk of a boutique divorce law firm where a steady stream of too-rich crazy paraded through daily.

I desperately tried to take on the identity of “New Yorker,” impossibly cool and uncaring about my constant flow of shitty jobs and unpleasant living situations. But I began covering crime for a daily newspaper there and started to answer the question, “What do you do?” And that became my entire identity.

When I got to Washington, I only knew a few people, but I was mostly a blank slate—a journalist in her early years ready to work in the political sphere. I immediately sort of assumed the persona of a New Yorker exiled to DC, complete with requisite complaints about bagels and a real lack of spirit.

“Yeah, I covered murders in New York,” was a constant refrain and one that inspired a lot of “Ooooh, that’s so intense” from the straight-laced political operatives I met. Somehow, “I’m from New England” didn’t sound quite so hard core.

I hadn’t been as badass as I imagined myself to be. When I was in New York, my home—my actual home in Massachusetts—was a mere train ride away. I went up as often as possible, so I never really had a chance to miss the place. When things got tough, I just escaped to the “Happy Valley.”

But now Congress kept me busy. Home meant flying back and taking time off. In the midst of Washington humidity, budget negotiations, and interviewing senators and congressmen, I craved the quiet afforded to me in my sleepy New England town. It seemed lame to miss it so much.

Then I was having breakfast one morning with a source of mine who worked for a member of the Democratic leadership. He asked where I was from, as everyone in DC inevitably does.

“Well, I moved here from New York,” I explained. “But I grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

“Oh my God, my wife is from near there,” he exclaimed, nearly jumping out of his seat. We proceeded to spend the next hour extolling the virtues of really great sweater weather, the amazing music, the coffee, and the mountains in the fall. God, the mountains in the fall are the best.

These conversations became more frequent—with people from the area and the members of Congress who represent these places. It became a virtue to be from a place people so strongly identified with.

I felt like I knew an awesome secret that only a few of us in town shared.

The source with whom I had breakfast moved his family back to Massachusetts recently. He’ll post photos on Facebook of his kids watching quaint parades or running through the woods or eating farm-fresh ice cream. I also know they are going to get the kind of childhood I got.

I’m pretty jealous of them, but at least with that comes a sense that I know exactly what I’m missing and exactly where I’m from.

Kate Nocera – journalist
Washington, DC
Website
Twitter

Illustration by Sunra Thompson

The post Notes from an Expat: It Seemed Lame to Miss it So Much appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally appeared in our September 2015 print issue.

Don’t be fooled by her colorful costumes and “anyone can do it” attitude—Abby is a serious artist. An adjunct professor at Columbia University who frequently spends time in her hometown of Burlington, Vermont, Manock takes complicated concepts and boils them down into publicly digestible but very personal archetypes.

In the Deitch Projects gallery’s 2006 Art Parade, Manock’s production Annie vs. Grease Soundtrack War had volunteers dress as either Annie from the musical or Danny from the film Grease. This wasn’t bio-sex-specific—people were just asked to identify as either character, dress accordingly, and then parade down the streets of Manhattan dancing to their respective soundtrack.

Annie vs. Grease Soundtrack War | Photo by Josh Tonsfeldt

“This whole project started because I would blast the Annie and Grease soundtracks in my studio,” Manock says. “People would just stop in to talk. They were so excited to tell me their stories surrounding these songs!

“When the volunteers—friends and acquaintances from every phase of my life—showed up [the day of the Art Parade], I asked them all to wear a bag on their head. At first I think people were like, ‘I have to wear bag on my head?’ But then something amazing happened. We took all of our individual experiences with these songs and became a collective. Annie and Danny’s worlds fused. It was almost surreal. It was like we created our own musical—something bigger than its parts.”

In another public artwork, Volley of the Nuts, performers dressed as either Wingnuts (more techy) or Acorns (more woodsy) and performed a set of tasks specific to their persona. The Wingnuts were like crows. Their job was to be fascinated by shiny things, hang out and taunt people, and basically mess things up. The Acorns’ job was to clean up after the Wingnuts. They would tidy and hide the shiny things by digging holes and burying them. The Wingnuts would then scratch at the dirt and dig the shiny things up, completing the circle. It became like a spectator sport. Onlookers would pick sides, mostly rooting for the Acorns. These two “sides” were essentially of the same coin. Through play, the teams demonstrated this symbiotic relationship.

“Ernie and Bert” from What Ever It Takes | Photo by Sam Simon

“I love the way things that are black and white play off each other,” Manock says.

In addition to teaching, she works as an artist’s assistant, a scenic painter, a muralist, a prop maker, and a visual designer. I met her in 2004 while she was conceiving Mastodon Cometh. The underlying goal of this work was to explore the idea of sustenance and how dramatically it has changed over time. It was commissioned as part of an on-site project for the band Phish’s “final” concert in Coventry, Vermont.

Performers dressed as cavemen dragged an enormous steel-framed mastodon out into the throngs of concertgoers. They then decapitated and split open the elephant-like creature, transforming it into a Quickie Mart. Instead of chomping on prehistoric mammal meat, the performers, now dressed in convenience-store uniforms, snacked on and dispensed packets filled with jelly beans, Cheetos, Life Savers, and all sorts of other highly processed “foods.” Ahhhh, progress!

“The Noodle Family Traveling Circus” | Photo by Abby Manock

Manock’s art is in a constant state of evolution, and she feels she is moving into a new creative phase. In August of last year, for example, she brought the Mastodon project to its knees. In a short film starring some of the original cast dressed in both caveman and Quickie Mart costumes, the mastodon was burned to the ground. Her next “mammoth” undertaking is a project involving good-luck charms and a string of glow-in-the-dark jellyfish.

“Most recently,” she adds, “I’ve been doing some murals. I’ve always used black lines to more clearly define my patterns. But I’m going for something more subtle now. I’m having the colors go right up against each other. It’s like I’m letting up on ‘total control.’ I’m not coloring between the lines. I’m just letting the colors speak for themselves.”

Abby Manock – Visual Artist
Burlington, Vermont
Website
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Top photo of Abby Manock by Tim Ireland

The post Black, White, and Abby All Over appeared first on Take Magazine.

When I interview chef Bun Lai of Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, Connecticut, he has just wrapped filming a TV series in which he travels the world creating new dishes from exotic invasive species. Think a hot, Asian Andrew-Zimmern-of-Bizarre Foods-goes-green kind of thing. On the menu? Killer bees, poisonous vipers, and stingrays.

Photo by Dominic Perri

“It’s really about having us open our minds to other ways of eating and living,” he says of the show. “Under the surface, invasive species are tied to food justice and food security.” Bun, unlike many chefs, takes the farm-to-table, or in this case sea-to-table, movement beyond trendy to his personal hope for the future of Earth and the human race.

In addition to being a James Beard Foundation-nominated chef, he is an ambassador for the healthy oceans advocacy group Seafood Watch; a popular keynote speaker on sustainable food; and a contributor to Scientific American, among other publications.

At Miya’s Sushi, Bun puts his knowledge of, and beliefs about, sustainability into exquisite practice. Not only does he work solely with ingredients that are sustainably harvested, but he also creates unique menu items that feature local invasive species not typically found on American plates.

Take, for example, locally foraged mugwort, an invasive herb originally brought here by the Pilgrims. Or Asian shore crab—which migrated en masse to North America on the ballasts of ships in the 1980s—that Bun harvests off the Connecticut coast. Or tilapia grown by students of Connecticut’s Bridgeport Regional Aquaculture Science & Technology Education Center.

Photo by Dominic Perri

Bun and his coworkers dive for ”trash fish” and shellfish on 75 acres of shellfishing grounds just 12 miles from the restaurant (which owns the fishing rights). He also has a 10-acre woodland farm 7 miles from Miya’s. “We do some growing,” he says, “but a whole lot more foraging.”

Miya’s 42-page menu is a sort of manifesto, as educational as it is mouthwatering. Kiribati sashimi is made from spear-caught (no net fishing, please) invasive Mexican lionfish, mineral-rich Kiribati sea salt, and “a dozen profoundly mouth-numbing spices.” The dish is on the menu in part to create awareness about global warming, because Kiribati, at only 8 to 12 feet above sea level, may become the first nation to be completely consumed by the ocean due to climate change.

“The purpose of food is nourishment, but not just for our bodies,” Bun says. “It’s important to understand that the ecosystem of our bodies is tied to the ecosystem of the entire planet. When we pollute one, we pollute the other.”

Photo by Dominic Perri

To promote healthier eating, the dishes at Miya’s that are healthiest for both people and the planet are deliberately the most affordable. Most cost less than five dollars, the price of a Big Mac meal—a reference point that is no coincidence and noted on the restaurant’s website.

Bun credits his parents for his passion for sustainable food and living. His Japanese mother, a nutritionist, opened Miya’s in 1982 and named it after Bun’s older sister. His Chinese father was a research doctor.

“They are the two people who have colored everything that I actually do in the cuisine of sushi,” he says. “They both had the philosophy that . . . it’s not enough to have a career. You have to have some positive impact on the world. I’m following that tradition.”

Chef Bun Lai of Miya’s Sushi grows food, but mostly forages for it, at his farm outside New Haven, Connecticut | Photo by Dominic Perri

Bun also credits the New Haven community, home to world-renowned Yale University, for influencing his cuisine. “I ended up collaborating over the years with, and being influenced by and educated by, some of the most interesting people who come from a vast array of life experiences and disciplines,” he says. “The sushi we do reflects that. It’s very multidisciplinary.”

Follow Chef Bun Lai here on twitter and facebook and keep up with Miya’s sushi restaurant here.

This article originally appeared in our September 2015 print edition.

Top photo by Dominic Perri Photography

The post Invasive Species-to-Table appeared first on Take Magazine.

Ben Blanc arrived in Providence a little over a decade ago to get his Master of Fine Arts at the Rhode Island School of Design. Like many RISD graduates, the Illinois-born designer stuck around after graduation.

“In Providence, you can explore creative boundaries without feeling that you’re under a microscope,” he says. “Everyone’s pretty respectful here. It’s what separates Providence from places like New York.”

Blanc’s work inhabits the margins between design and art. For The Exchange, a 2012 gallery show, he constructed 200 baseball-sized objects out of dyed Douglas fir. Smooth with irregular angled edges, the black pieces resemble lumps of coal. One, and only one, contained a gold nugget worth roughly $1,300. Gallery visitors, unable to tell which piece had the gold inside, were allowed to buy the objects for $30 each. When each buyer removed his or her purchase from the gallery, Blanc replaced it with a large, black wooden X.

Providence is a great city for anyone working in metal, according to Blanc. “Gorham was such a huge player here,” he says, referring to the silver company founded in Providence in 1831. “And there are many small shops still in operation here doing powder coating, anodizing, lost-wax casting, [and] metal spinning.”

Blanc works in an old single-story brick building that also houses a screen-printing studio, a florist, and a manufacturer of luxury leather goods. He designed oak and leather booths for New Rivers, one of Providence’s most celebrated restaurants, as well as walnut benches for the recently expanded Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.

Ben (left) and Aja Blanc in their Providence, Rhode Island, design studio with their brass planters | photo by Ian Travis Barnard

Late last year, he began a formal collaboration with his wife, Aja, and the two are now partners in a furniture firm that specializes in minimalist, limited-edition furniture, lighting, and objects. The pair’s recent offerings include a two-piece, moon-shaped coffee table made of white oak and Vermont white marble, and a bronze apatosaurus. “It’s really fun to sculpt dinosaurs,” Ben says, by way of explanation.

In May, Ben and Aja debuted a new series at Site Unseen OFFSITE in conjunction with NYCxDesign, New York City’s annual weeklong celebration of design. Aja’s influence is immediately evident in the collection, which focuses on lunar objects and “cultish wuwu,” as she laughingly phrases it. The collection includes spun brass planters, a coil rug, and a half-moon mirror whose bottom half is composed of silk mohair and wool.

Ben sources many materials locally and works with several of the region’s small manufacturing shops for finishing work. “I’m working with wood, stone, and metal,” he says. “Honest materials that the people have some connection to.”

Follow Ben and Aja online and on Instagram.

This article originally appeared in our September 2015 Print issue.

Top photograph of Ben and Aja Blanc by Ian Travis Barnard

The post Blanc Looks appeared first on Take Magazine.