Real Not Real

I’ve been throwing dinner parties since I was old enough to actually throw a party. There was the Easter luncheon when I was in 5th grade, and my 18th birthday party which was a seated dinner for 12. I’ve thrown backyard barbeques and deck parties and corporate holiday parties and more styles of dinner parties at my various apartments than I can count. But recently I’ve been noticing that the formal dinner party is slowly evolving into an artist event similar to a salon gathering. Not that these haven’t existed for years and decades and centuries, just that these are growing in popularity among people my age living in cities with cramped apartments and itty-bitty cooking spaces… and there tends to be a general aesthetic that accompanies them: the long table, the bottles of wine, the family-style serving, the rustic/industrial/unkempt setting-meets-formal/eclectic-dining, the candles and low lighting and non-dress code. When I started at Yale, my friend Geoff and I (and others?) decided we should have a dinner party to integrate the designers in our program. Geoff’s place was the designated venue, since he had a barren apartment that could fit 36 designers with music and cigarettes (plenty of windows and indifferent neighbors). Our first dinner party was a potluck with a menu of my making… pseudo-Southern-style food: sweet potato casserole and baked chicken and mashed potatoes and asparagus, spinach salad and baked macaroni and cheese. This was a somewhat small affair, pieced together before 22″ of snow was dropped on New Haven in the winter of ’04/’05.

(THE TABLE AT THE FIRST DINNER PARTY AT GEOFF’S)

As an extension of a project Geoff and Lana and others were completing at Yale, we hosted another party, this time in our studio space. The table was formalized with matching dishes, linens, chairs, candles. I played a fake-fireplace from the projector onto the giant blank wall in our atrium. We ate, we danced.

(THE TABLE AT THE SECOND STUDIO DINNER PARTY)

Then came the dinner party at the end of the year that was more of a wine and dance fest. It was back at Geoff’s, and we ran out of real plates and glasses so it was a smorgasbord of breakables and paper goods, mismatched chairs and pieced-together tables. But much of it was the same: the communal, family-style eating, views of New Haven from three giant glass windows, a bare-bones space with people and food to fill it.

(THE TABLE AT THE LAST DINNER PARTY AT GEOFF’S)

Then, in the fall of ’07, a farewell dinner for Chip Benson, our beloved, departing, Yale School of Art Dean. With the same accoutrements: long tables, wine, and Chip’s work pinned to the walls around us. It was a feast for the eyes and the bellies.

(CHIP BENSON’S FAREWELL DINNER, COURTESY OF KEN MEIER)

And finally, this fall, two stories published in the New York Times: one about Michael Hebberoy in the Northwest, and another about Anne Apparu and Agathe Snow in New York. And we see it over and over: the table, the unlikely-space-converted to-formal-dining-mash-up, the bits of art and conversation that make these events both a process and a product.

(DINNER PARTY BY MICHAEL HEBBEROY)

(DINNER PARTY BY ANNE APPARU AND AGATHE SNOW)

And it’s, in part, this space in which I’d like to reside. This blending of my home and my work, my process and my production, my hobbies and my education. I have no intention of becoming a chef or even a cook per se, but hosting and organizing and creating community — whether through this blog or print pieces or dinner parties — is certainly on the agenda for the next few years.