Autumn Spiral Dinner

2024 | Queens, NY

Gathering (collaborative work)

ceramic, glass, neon, acorn-dyed fabric, flowers, crocheted textiles, candles, foods, drinks

when i began to think about what actions would be appropriate for exploring rituals of connection, a dinner very quickly sprung to my mind.

I am blessed with a group of extremely skilled and talented friends, who are well versed in craft both inside and outside of the kitchen. because of this, my mind was immediately alight with visions of what we could all co-create together.

dining is a very special act because it lies at the intersection of so many fields of interest and involves so many distinct elements. there is the

attention to design and craft needed to create a welcoming table — plates, silverware, tablecloths, and so on. here, the care is held both in the making of the objects themselves and in their particular arrangement in the final table setting. there is the cooking — the ingredients (living, once living, orderived from living creatures) and the collaborative act of transmuting that into food using human tools such as: agriculture, stoves, pots, knives. there are floral arrangements to be organised, scents to be curated, and bread that needs to rise. a dinner, like many of our domestic pursuits, covertly contains and reflects important elements of life outside the home.

this dinner is a party of six: myself, el, abel, river, hannah, and lucky. over the course of a couple weeks, i inform everyone that we are going to be cohosting a dinner together. this dinner is meant to be a ceremony of reciprocity; this is not my dinner, but one that we are all equitably involved in and responsible for. some essentials for ensuring that are: we all handcraft something needed for the table, we are all involved in the cooking (and cleaning up), and we all bring ideas to what the evening should become.

read more about the dinner here in the “dining with oaks and ginkos” section (pg 40).