VCU news

By Leila Ugincius

While John Freyer claims to be “no master gardener,” the artist finds the relationship between food and art — and how it’s expressed — interesting.

So, at the beginning of this semester’s Time Studio class, Freyer instructed his students to build a raised-bed garden, fill it with soil and plant a variety of beans, which can grow to completion in as quickly as 35 days.

“One of the things when you’re working with living things is you’re tied to the growing season,” said Freyer, assistant professor of cross-disciplinary media in the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts. “So you kind of have to plan your schedule in that route.”

Freyer had hoped to have some sort of meal featuring the beans with his students by the end of the semester but, unlike most mediums, beans can be undependable: They just wouldn’t grow. But that didn’t stop Freyer from showing his students how to experience working with food from an artist’s perspective.

With the help of local restaurateurs Lauren Jurk and Greg Comstock from The Naked Onion, Freyer taught the class about the balance of flavor, the balance of color and the balance of texture. Food goes beyond mere sustenance. The way ingredients are arranged on the plate must be appealing to the eye while also appealing to the palate.

“Pretty much any form of individual expression is art,” Comstock said. “And food is just another way you can express yourself.”

Jurk and Comstock, with their sole employee, Becky Schauer, were guest lecturers of sorts in Freyer’s class this fall. Since the class-grown beans were out, the Naked Onion team brought its own food, creating a plate with coulis, pancetta crumble, citrus sherry vinaigrette, haricot vert and roasted peppers, crab salad and a balsamic reduction.

While the trio worked, they shared their techniques with the class, including sketching on paper beforehand what the plating would look like, or using a basting brush as a paint brush.

“You don’t put anything on the plate that’s not supposed to be there,” Jurk said. “If it does not make sense, if it does not add anything delicious to the dish, do not put in on there. … Be creative, make sure that everything that’s supposed to be on the dish is on there.”

After The Naked Onion’s presentation, students worked in teams to try their own hands at plating the same ingredients, using what they had learned. Sarah Mizer, who teaches surface research in the Art Foundation Program, served as judge, both on the design of the food and the ways the flavors blended together depending on their placements on the plate. One plate looked as if it were inspired by sushi, while another featured a sunburst design. One plate was overpowered by the balsamic reduction, which made it too sweet, while another had blended the flavors better.

Jurk and Comstock spend weeks, if not months, testing a dish, adding and reducing flavors, and refining it in a variety of other ways.

“Coming up with our menu, for instance, we spent about four months menu planning,” Jurk said. “And we only have nine sandwiches.” A lot of that time was spent on trial and error, because what sounds like a good dish can end up missing something. So they taste, start over and keep trying until they have something that works.

Once the recipe is perfected, they have to work on the best way to present it.

“People eat with their eyes first and if it’s visually appealing, they’re going to be so much more excited,” Jurk said. “It gets their palate ready almost. You start to salivate. … If you took all of those ingredients and just tossed them together in a bowl, it wouldn’t be very pretty.”

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