What's For Dinner?…An Exhibition at the International Quilt Festival in Houston, 2013

Leslie and Jamie

Photograph taken by the Houston Chronicle

Every evening without fail, Jamie asks her friends on Facebook a question:  What's For Dinner?
The list includes everything from multi-course gourmet meals to a pint of ice cream.  It is always entertaining.
Jamie and I began this little cooking blog a few years ago after deciding that it would be easier to have a blog about cooking and share our recipes and restaurant adventures than to constantly send pictures and recipes via SMS.  Well, we still do that (hello Instagram!).  But, basically, that is how the cooking blog came into being.

Fast forward to the fall of 2012.  The Special Exhibits coordinator for the International Quilt Festival was thinking about putting together a food-related quilt exhibit.  She remembered Jamie's nightly ritual on Facebook.  And that is the gist of how the exhibition evolved.

The call for entry was for artists to create a piece about the size of a placemat:  15inches by 24 inches.
Jamie and I juried the exhibition via an online site.  I lobbied for the exhibit to be presented as a dinner party.  We printed the artist statements on pages laminated and set up like a restaurant menu.  Table tent cards listed the name of the piece and the artist who made it.

Jamie and I were absolutely thrilled with the amazing work that was submitted.  The exhibit made a fun little splash at the International Quilt Market and Festival and we had a writer & photographer from the Houston Chronicle, as well as a reporter from the local PBS station come interview us.

The following are some photos I took during the festival, and a link to the article in the Houston Chronicle:

My former college job came in handy:  I made 4 bouquets for the table,

which was larger than I anticipated!

Here is the "menu" of artist statements.

Here are a couple of the images taken by the photographer from the Houston Chronicle:

Here is Jamie with her curator's piece, "Four Food Groups".

Here I am with my curator's piece, "Nourishment & Tradition".

In case you missed the link above, the article in the Houston Chronicle can be found here.

There are many more photographs of the individual pieces. I hope you check it out!

I think two of the nicest things I heard about the exhibition were 1) People seemed to love the presentation of the pieces on a table versus the traditional method of hanging them on a curtain or wall, and 2) several people told me they thought Judy Chicago would like it.  That thrilled me!