An Abundant Life - Celebrating Design

For two weeks in May this year I had the opportunity to attend some of the most exciting and joyful design events in New York City that were part of NYCxDESIGN. It's a time that in the past was always full of wonderful occasions for celebrating design and introducing new products and projects, but this year was the 10th Anniversary and after not having been able to celebrate in person for so long, there was a definite feeling of renewal and reviving of spirits, and the events themselves seemed extra special even as some were more intimate and a bit quieter than they might have been in the past.

A visit to the home page for NYCxDESIGN finds the information that it is "a newly minted non-profit with a mission of "Empowering and promoting NYC's design community." The festival ran this year from May 10 - May 20, and there were so many wonderful things to see and do that I found myself up and about early and staying out late for each excitement filled and inspiring day. I'll be writing more in depth on the designers and showrooms and events I attended in future posts, but for now I wanted to share a little glimpse into some of the wonders I experienced. With so much gratitude to each host and to NYCxDESIGN for the beautiful experiences of these wonder filled days celebrating design!

NYCxDESIGN

Around Town

In New York City

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

An Abundant Life - Living In Harmony

A few months ago when the weather was still very cold, I received a text introduction to Dhruva LaTorre, the co-owner of Plant Base Market from a mutual Artist friend who is actively involved in community development projects to support community wellness and well being. I had heard about Plant Base, but because it's all the way across the city in an area that I don't regularly travel to especially in colder weather, I hadn't made the time to go there yet. The mutual friend who made the introduction is someone who knows about the projects I've been developing and the work I've been doing in community and youth development, health and wellness and the arts, and he said that he thought the owner of Plant Base and I needed to meet. I'm always grateful for introductions, especially from people whose work I respect, and so I responded with thanks that I'd happily meet and talk.

Because both of our schedules were full at the time, we made an appointment to talk on the phone first. That conversation was such a wonderful one so full of likeminded and inspiring sharing of ideas and vision for our individual work that we decided to meet in person and continue the conversation onsite at Plant Base.

According to the website, "Plant Base was founded in November 2018 by Dhruva Latorre and Andy Hertz, 2 friends who shared a passion for animal rights, protecting the environment, health, helping people, and bold ideas to change the world." Their mission "is to help people implement a happier and healthier lifestyle through plant based foods and ethical products sold in a zero-waste format." The website goes on to describe that, "With a strong emphasis on sustainability, animal rights and humanitarian rights, ethics and health, our mail goal is to provide access to affordable and healthy food for neighborhoods in need."

Dhruva's family had a non-profit that helped provide healthy food to underprivileged residents in Jersey City and surrounding communities, and he decided to turn Plant Base into a not-for-profit so that in addition to providing a community based place where people could gather for healthy food, he would be able to provide food on a pay what you can basis and also branch out into classes, community and youth outreach.

Each time I visit or speak with Dhruva, I am inspired, and the projects that I am working on and developing are becoming more nuanced and layered with meaning because of the vision he has not only been discussing but that he has been actively living and creating in the community around him. His long term goals are to create a model that can be recreated anywhere, and his daily life is a model of how we can all learn to live our lives in harmony with the world around us, with respect for other people, animals and the earth.

Plant Base Market

370 Pacific Avenue

Jersey City, New Jersey

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

An Abundant Life - Nurturing

There are times when a holiday falls on the Sunday when I am planning to write a blog post, and sometimes it seems like I need to make mention of that holiday and honor the occasion with a post that's a bit out of the usual scheme of things. For Mother's Day this year I felt as if what I needed to write about was not just Mothers in general or specific, but the idea of what a good supportive Mother can be. In some of my email newsletters I've been receiving messages for the past few weeks, saying that they understand that Mother's Day can be a tough time for some people and that if I want to opt out of their Mother's Day emails I'm welcome to and they'll resume emailing me after the holiday. It was actually a very considerate and thoughtful thing for these businesses, companies and marketing people to think about, and though I wasn't bothered by receiving the emails, as I began to think about what I would write for this Mother's Day Sunday, an idea was formed that maybe what I needed to talk about was Mother's Day itself and Mothers, or what Mothers can mean for us in the most positive scenarios.

I was at an event the other night and an Artist who I met there was speaking with me for quite some time. He was very insightful and shared with me something that made me think of a number of Artists who I have known over the years. There is an experience I've had from time to time, and it's happened often enough that I've started to notice it, that when I give some Artists a compliment or encouragement they look very uncomfortable and almost as if it's painful for them to hear it. In the past few months I've had the opportunity to view some webinars and receive some training around the topic of helping people heal from trauma, and so I've become very sensitive to the fact that many of us are walking around with challenges and deeply hidden issues that keep us from living our lives in joy and the freedom that comes from feeling healed and whole as a person.

One of the things that has been striking to me in the webinars and written material I've been viewing is that trauma does not have to be something that is larger than life and outsized beyond the normal every day difficulties many of us face. Trauma in a clinical sense can be something that arises from an experience of not being loved and cared for and not being accepted for who we are when we are growing up. Because of my conversation with the Artist at the event, I started to think more deeply about the issues of trauma and the behavior that can so deeply affect people's emotional life, and I began to consider that it might be extremely difficult to be a child of parents who don't understand the way that this particular child views the world and how they express themselves and make sense of the world through their art. That led me to begin thinking that at times when I think that I am being encouraging, the very experience of hearing positive feedback could be deeply emotionally affecting some of the people I am trying to encourage, and that the experience of hearing praise when they had so often heard otherwise as children, could be bringing up memories and feelings that are confusing at best and possibly very painful.

Because it is always my intent to help and support and lift up with love, to think that I might be harming someone by being supportive and kind made me assess the things that I do and the way that I go about them in a much more careful way. And that led me to begin to think about Mothers and how important they are to our development as competent, confident, and comfortably comforted beings. That in turn led me to think of my own Mother, and to think of the way that I approach the work that I do and the interactions I have with the Artists who I know.

My own Mother was an Artist, and I've come to realize that after many years of just being aware that she was always creating something. She sang and played the piano beautifully, she was a wonderful cook whose cakes and pies and roasts and breakfasts, lunches and dinners were always beautifully prepared and elegantly and comfortably served. She drew and painted, made collages, sewed, reupholstered and refinished furniture, and designed the living spaces in our house that I grew up in with care. She told me once that some of her paintings had been thrown away when her parents moved out of one of their homes, and that ever since that time she had saved all of her own children's drawings and artwork of every kind because she didn't want us to ever have to experience that. As children and teenagers we were encouraged to learn instruments, write, read, perform, sing, draw and explore any art that interested us. I've played viola, violin, guitar, the recorder, harmonicas and the piano, and I've been singing my whole life, acting and writing plays since I was three, and sculpting with clay, drawing and making all kinds of art from the time my mother first put me on the floor in the middle of a large piece of white paper and gave me a box of cray pas and a large container of crayons to play with.

Over the years I've had teachers tell me that I wasn't an Artist because I didn't draw figuratively the way they wanted me to. There have been times that I've been pigeonholed into acting roles or sections of the choir or have been sidelined, and times I've been discouraged from playing the instruments I loved. Until recently I never called myself an Artist when people asked me if I was one because I carried with me all of the messages I'd been given by people who told me I couldn't draw or paint or sculpt. Now that I work with so many Artists, it's one of the most enjoyable experiences I have to be able to share with them how wonderful they are, and that is why I started to think very deeply about why it was that I needed to do that when I heard from the Artist I was speaking with that it can make Artists very uncomfortable to hear the kind and encouraging words that I so often feel are necessary to say.

One of the things that I have been learning in the workshops and webinars about trauma is that when we are working with people or speaking with people who have experienced rejection and pain in their interpersonal interactions, sometimes it is very hard for trust to be built. And if there is an absence of trust or an experience of feeling afraid or unable to trust, hearing something kind or supportive could actually put people on their guard and raise the question of what our motive is and why we are saying and doing kind things. As I began to think about all of these scenarios together, it occurred to me that the key to trust is time and the key to healing is time, and they key to helping people understand that our only motive is to help them see how uniquely beautiful and special they are is time. Time is also the key to beginning to accept and receive the love that we're given and it's the key to beginning to accept ourselves fully as we are. It is said that Time Heals All Wounds, and though I think that's part of it, I think that patience is part of it too. When we set out to nurture and to share love and care and encouragement, our ability to take the time and patience to really understand what another person is feeling can make all the difference in whether we are able to truly help and give the right kind of support. Patience and taking the time that is needed to let trust grow allows others the time that they need to feel comfortable to receive what we offer and share, and to respond in a way that helps us all become healed and whole.

My Mother

As  A Teenager

In New York

Blessings,

Jannie Susan  

An Abundant Life - Traveling Through Time

When I recently took a trip to Stamford to attend a talk by Chef Paul Gerard at Third Place at Half Full Brewery, I made a plan to explore the neighborhood a bit on my way. As I wrote last week, the trip was a thoroughly enjoyable one, and part of the reason was because of one of the unexpected and beautiful places I discovered that was a very easy walk from the train station and a very lovely surprise to find myself in on a warm and glowing spring afternoon.

The Antique and Artisan Gallery brought a smile to my face the minute I arrived at their driveway. Walking from the train station and looking for their address, I saw their sign on their building and realized that it was a much larger space than I'd been expecting. As I turned the corner to enter their driveway and saw the rows of antique garden statuary, benches and outdoor furnishings, I thought to myself that this was a place where I would never want to leave. The whole outdoor area was one that was filled with things that I love, and I could have wandered out there in the sunshine for hours, but thinking I had best first go inside and take at least a quick look, I walked in the front door and was greeted by the nicest people imaginable who explained that the gallery was a large one and invited me to walk around and explore.

Each area of The Antique and Artisan Gallery is curated with an Artist's eye. The website states that it was "opened by Bruce Wylie and Mari Ann Maher with the goal to create an unparalleled shopping experience" and it is a wonderful one. There are rooms with themes such as the textile room and areas that were set up to look like a room in a home. Different periods are represented along with different styles of furnishings and different types of art, and I honestly think I could have lived happily in any of of the areas or in all of them all at once. There is jewelry, too, and different kinds of art and artisanal work that are carefully added into the design of the different spaces. Antiques mingle with midcentury and contemporary art has a conversation with more rustic designs. Each piece in the space is a work of art, and everything, though placed carefully in its different room or space where it is meant to create a unique tableau, flows so beautifully together it makes for a lovely combination of old and new, classic and modern, all with a little sparkle and shine and the occasional whimsical touch added in.

Places like The Antique and Artisan Gallery are an adventure and a destination to return to again and again. With glass vitrines filled with objets d'art and comfortable beautifully luxurious furnishings, walking through the indoor and outdoor spaces brings a sense of peace and joy and adds inspiration to each moment. While visiting this carefully designed space we can dream the dreams of how beautiful life can be when we take time to reflect and nurture the beauty from the past and care for what is lovely throughout time.

The Antique And Artisan Gallery

69 Jefferson Street

Stamford, Connecticut

https://theantiqueandartisangallery.com

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

An Abundant Life - Finding A New Place

I've written about Chef Paul Gerard in these pages before, and from the first day I met him in September of 2017 I began taking photographs of him and the amazing food he creates, and there are always reminders and memories of him and his exquisite perfection of culinary artistry appearing in my photograph files. There was a period of time when I was working on a few projects that he either directly inspired or in some way was a catalyst for, and I have photographs of him meeting with Artists and friends I introduced to him and of a class I taught on nutrition and health and wellness at one of his restaurants where I had first met him. The class was part of a pilot program for a community kitchen project I was developing with an organization on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and he contributed his expertise, recipes and philosophy of food to the discussion which brought the work that we were doing in the community to a new level. It's been my goal for many years now to assist every person and family with resources for food and nutrition education and the ability to provide the highest quality of food possible regardless of income level or background, and that pilot program became the jumping off point when I began to create the Love & Plenty project in March of 2020 to help the restaurants that had been shut down get funding to provide meals for people in need. As I've noted in these pages, Love & Plenty keeps growing, and Chef Paul Gerard was the foremost inspiration behind that project. It's his food and who he is as an inspirational creative force that has been an integral part of how the project continues to grow and become much more than I could ever have imagined.

It had been some time since I had seen him, and though I had been keeping him updated on the progress that was happening with Love & Plenty, his presence in the actual events of this past year has been heartily missed. His not being around for so long has made it so that my focus has had to go elsewhere and the project has continued to grow in ways that are wonderful, but I've been missing his food and wishing I could see him during this time, and so when I heard that he'd be speaking at an event at a community space that is affiliated with a brewery in Stamford, Connecticut, I looked up the directions and was happily surprised to see that I could easily take the Metro North Harlem Line from Grand Central Station to get there. That particular train is one that I have always loved since I was a child and it has so many beautiful memories for me, of trips taken with my mother, of my college years at Sarah Lawrence, and of my father's history at Yale. The address where the talk would be held looked to be an easy walk from the Stamford train station, and so I began to plan the trip.

I like taking adventures, and I thought it would fun to make a day of it, and so I began to look around for other things to do that were near the area of the Brewery. A few years ago I visited an Artist I had met in Stamford, and the Brewery website mentioned that it had a gallery in the same building, and so I started looking online to find other galleries nearby. I found some antique and artisan galleries and shops and mapped it out and found when I arrived that the walk to each was even easier than the online mapping explained. Maps used to be much easier to use for walking, but now everything is geared toward driving or taking a car service, so I was pleasantly surprised when I got off the train and began what I thought would be a more difficult and confusing hike to find out that it was a breeze. I'll share more on those wonderful places I found to browse that day when I write about them in upcoming weeks. For now I'll focus on Third Place by Half Full Brewery, the brewery and community space where I went to see Chef Paul Gerard speak at a very special event called Appetite For Connection.

Taking the train from Grand Central on the Harlem Line hits every chord of my childhood and young adult happiness, and I'm also a big fan of breweries. My mother's father was a baker who always brewed his own beer, and my mother's mother's brothers who were also originally part of my great-grandfather's bakery family left the family business to start a bar in Brooklyn that prospered because of their skill in brewing and distilling. Third Place by Half Full Brewery is one of those spaces that feels comfortable from the moment I walked into it. They describe on their website that the name comes from the idea that we have two places where we spend most of our time, our home and our work, and that we need to have another place to relax, have fun and connect with others and they want to be that place. I'd say they've done what they set out to do because my evening there was so enjoyable I'd go back on the train any time for a visit.

The talk Chef Paul Gerard gave was part of an event series by the Stamford Literature, Art & Culture Salon, which is known as SLACS, and they have the wonderful mission of Building Community & Enriching Lives Through Creative Pursuits. Their website and Instagram are a play on words, cutmesomeslac.org and @cutmesomeslac, which adds some levity to the mix, and their motto is Vitae Melius Est Cum Arte, or "Life Is Better With Art" as I was able to translate it to online because my own Latin was much too long ago to remember. I agree with that sentiment thoroughly, and just reading the Latin made me want to go back in my memory and tease out the nuances of the language as I used to love to do once upon a time. According to the website, "SLACS is a collective of like-minded individuals who come together to enrich each other's lives by sharing their creative interests." It was founded by Mark Gottlieb, Sarah Mastroni, Russ Redgate, Matt Terry, and Maria F. Sanchez. On the evening I attended, Mark Gottlieb interviewed Chef Paul Gerard and was the facilitator for the conversation. From what I have seen on their Instagram page and their website, along with what I experienced that evening, they are a great organization that hosts a variety of different types of events that all have a community focus and give audiences a view into a topic or a person or a business or a way of life that is unique and refreshing and inspiring.

Over the course of the evening, Chef Paul Gerard shared information about his current pursuits as well as some of his history. He is the star of his new show Hungry For More and he has been working on his cookbook and memoir, which will combine stories of his well traveled life with recipes from his well seasoned history. One thing that I will share is that though I'm sure it will be a wonderful book because he is a wonderful writer, there is no way to recreate the food this Chef makes. All the recipes in the world can't take the place of the magic that happens when he's in a kitchen. He has shared recipes with me which I am so grateful for, but though they have a hint of the goodness that is found when he makes them, the richness of flavor and texture and scent  and the sensory experience that is inspiring and life changing about the food he creates is something only he can do.     

As I write this I find myself wishing that there was some place like Third Place at Half Full Brewery and an organization like SLACS to host events closer to home, but taking the train to Stamford is an enjoyable adventure, and I'm very happy to have found a new place.

Stamford Literature, Arts & Culture Salon (SLACS)

At Third Place at Half Full Brewery

575 Pacific Street

Stamford, Connecticut

https://www.cutmesomeslac.org

https://halffullbrewery.com/location/third-place

An Excellent IPA

A Flavorful Dark Brew

A Lovely Strawberry Cider

Mark Gottlieb And Chef Paul Gerard

In Conversation

At The SLACS Event

"Appetite For Connection"

Blessings,

Jannie Susan