Emily Lanctot says an old cookbook is a portal; it lets you taste something your ancestors tasted, it lets you recreate a sensory experience across time. A thumbprint cookie recipe from a spiral-bound cookbook published by a church that no longer exists. Handwritten notes in the margins where long-dead home cooks point out absences, adjustments, and typos.
A recipe in a community cookbook might be a person's only publication, their one non-institutional public record. Like a private press record, these regional collections had limited print runs and tiny audiences. They were a gift to the community and a time capsule.
Drawing from her collection of obscure cookbooks, Emily made this exuberant body of work — the Secret Recipes series — in response to recipes passed down through community cookbooks and word of mouth in the Copper Country region of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Each drawing represents one dish: translated into cheerful, confident swoops of saturated color in tempera paint, marker, and pastels. The drawings go right to the edge of the paper, like a table loaded heavy for a feast.
Title: Ann Brezniak's Holiday Cheese (her Grandmother's)
Media: Tempera paint, marker, pastel on paper
Measurements: 8.5”x11”
About the artist: Born and raised in Copper Country, Emily Lanctot is an artist, teacher, and curator based in Marquette, Michigan. A real inviter-inner, during the warmer months, she organizes Observation Club, a multi-gen community of artists who meet near the shores of Lake Superior to observe, record, and chat.
Emily Lanctot says an old cookbook is a portal; it lets you taste something your ancestors tasted, it lets you recreate a sensory experience across time. A thumbprint cookie recipe from a spiral-bound cookbook published by a church that no longer exists. Handwritten notes in the margins where long-dead home cooks point out absences, adjustments, and typos.
A recipe in a community cookbook might be a person's only publication, their one non-institutional public record. Like a private press record, these regional collections had limited print runs and tiny audiences. They were a gift to the community and a time capsule.
Drawing from her collection of obscure cookbooks, Emily made this exuberant body of work — the Secret Recipes series — in response to recipes passed down through community cookbooks and word of mouth in the Copper Country region of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Each drawing represents one dish: translated into cheerful, confident swoops of saturated color in tempera paint, marker, and pastels. The drawings go right to the edge of the paper, like a table loaded heavy for a feast.
Title: Ann Brezniak's Holiday Cheese (her Grandmother's)
Media: Tempera paint, marker, pastel on paper
Measurements: 8.5”x11”
About the artist: Born and raised in Copper Country, Emily Lanctot is an artist, teacher, and curator based in Marquette, Michigan. A real inviter-inner, during the warmer months, she organizes Observation Club, a multi-gen community of artists who meet near the shores of Lake Superior to observe, record, and chat.
