A collaboration began five years ago with an animated conversation between two artists/colleagues about their personal experiences withvrecipes from family and friends. The original project drew from the idea that a recipe is a microcosm that embodies identity, culture, and memory. By examining the evolution of the aurthors' personal collections--clippings heirlooms, to screen grabs--the artists found relationships to time and space, embedded essences, and deep connections.
One's memories included a cardboard box salvaged from some gift that her mother filled with a random selection of clipped recipes. For the other, recipes and images of prize-winners in 1950's bake-off cookbooks have inspired projects where family secrets and financial gain are traded. The conversation continues and a partnership was formed to enlarge the dialogue and create art projects influenced by memories of food, friends, and family. The works include a handmade 'cookbook/box', site-specific installations, performances, projections, prints, and now a reification of the cookbook--the re-cookbook, which refers to the contents of the original artwork--the cookbook/box filled with simulacrum.
Like making art, a recipe is a blend of formula, code, inspiration, and performance--all subject to change for any reason. When a recipe is shared, the exchange is more than just a list of ingredients on paper complete with spills and smudges. They are encoded with ethnicity and a path to our pasts. More often than not, recipes evoke a dynamic range of emotions and are an expression of who we really are and where we come from.
The book is organized into two main sections--Criscola's and Fitzsimmons's--each includes snapshots of family and friends, recipes, personal ephemera like cookbooks and newspaper clippings, and satellite snippets to geolocate where a recipe came from. In addition, Fitzsimmons's section includes photographs she took of cookies she made from family recipes in 2015 and of her recipe book collection. Criscola's includes prints and posters inspired by and originally created for the Goffe Street Armory performance in 2014. The Re-Cookbook is designed and produced by Criscola's design studio, Criscola Design, and is published in partnership with Deborah Cannarella as the imprint OctoberWorks.
