Art.Eat.Film project grows community between students and faculty

“We started brainstorming about ways to stay connected to the students,” said Assistant Professor of Art Terrill Thomas, now the art department chair. “How could we encourage them to still keep making art?”

Thomas and his colleague, assistant art professor Tim Musso, landed upon an idea derived from a unique project begun in April that involved planting vegetables in an art department planter bed. The garden was inspired by Thomas’ recent graduate studies at the Vermont College of Design which explored the connections between graphic design, sustainability and identity through the experience of gardening at his Riverside home.

Musso used the art department garden for artistic instruction. In the planter grew several varieties of tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, Japanese eggplant, yellow and green bell peppers, cilantro, basil, Thai basil and mint. Musso’s Intro to Graphic Design students made observational drawings of the plants and created garden signage that a restaurant might use.

“The garden provided an answer by bearing produce that needed to be harvested every two weeks. We thought, why don’t we meet with students, harvest the vegetables and have a barbecue, talk about art and watch a movie? Art.Eat.Film was born,” Thomas said.

Thomas and Musso organized six Art.Eat.Film events throughout the summer. Each gathering attracted between nine and 26 students, faculty and art department alumni who participated in harvesting trays of vegetables from the art garden, roasting the food on Thomas’ donated gas grill, and watching movies projected onto an outdoor screen while eating their freshly cooked fare. The students were also encouraged to bring any artwork they had created for an informal critique.

Art.Eat.Film kicked off June 26 with an offering of black bean burgers and a Thai cucumber tomato salad from the garden with Thai basil, cilantro, grilled bell peppers and Japanese eggplant with garlic-lemon-basil mayonnaise.

Over the summer the group’s recipes became more elaborate and Thomas and Musso purchased additional knives, cutting boards and food preparation gloves so that everyone could be involved in the cooking process. Musso even built a rolling workstation for chopping vegetables.

Toward the end of the summer, Art.Eat.Film participants were cooking full meals for a growing crowd of attendees using a combination of recipes found online. In August they cooked Thai food for 26 people and in September, Indian food for 20. “One of the challenges of course is scaling recipes up for a large crowd,” Thomas said. An Indian egg curry recipe, for instance, involved 40 hard boiled eggs, five pounds of Yukon potatoes, six onions, three heads of garlic, four inches of ginger and about seven tablespoons of spices – turmeric, coriander, cumin, cayenne, and fenugreek.

Graphic design major Cat Kent, a senior this year, attended the Art.Eat.Film and helped harvest vegetables from the garden for making salads. She enjoyed keeping in touch with her friends who showed up for the food, art, and camaraderie. The get-togethers also helped form stronger ties with her professors, Kent said. “It was kinda’ cool seeing them on their own time, relaxing.”

“This is the first time the department of art and design has tried anything like this. We are thrilled with the response and plan on continuing this activity throughout the year,” Thomas said. He and Musso may even take the students on a road trip next year to visit Associate Professor of Art Susan Patt at her Arizona summer residence where her husband and son are cultivating hundreds of fruit trees, Thomas said.

“These social art events help us share what we believe is important,” he said, “a profound wonder of nature, discovering community through sharing, and inspiring each other through art and design.”