Making Memories

An Aug. 23 exhibition opening at Arts Center of the Ozarks will kick off the fourth annual Sensory Iconoclasts project.

The only exhibit of its kind in Northwest Arkansas, Sensory Iconoclasts, founded by Eve Smith, artist and ACO director of visual arts, and Case Dighero, chef and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art director of culinary services, pairs a Northwest Arkansas chef with an area artist and asks them to collaborate on a theme.

"I think that the compelling part of [Sensory Iconoclasts] is not just the end result that people see in the exhibition itself, but it's also the process of collaboration, which I think is incredibly unique," says Daniel Hintz.

Hintz, former executive director of Downtown Bentonville, is the culinary counterpart paired with artist Amber Perrodin, co-founder of Team Springdale and the Little Craft Show and current programming director of the Downtown Springdale Alliance. Hintz says that the duo's background in urban planning and community development makes them uniquely qualified to tackle this year's theme: the importance of nostalgia in food and art.

"Nostalgia is definitely something I work with on a pretty regular basis when we talk about the design and development of a community... People remember the way their communities used to be," he says. "And they want to get back to some semblance of that.

"Nostalgia has sort of a wistfulness to it, there's an emotion attached to it... Amber and I both work in community so we really wanted to explore nostalgia as it relates to community and family and how nostalgia plays a role in identity -- how we view ourselves through the lens of nostalgia."

Perrodin, too, was inspired by the link between the theme of nostalgia and her community involvement.

"With me, something I always bring to the table is that I am still in downtown Springdale. My family has been here for over a hundred years... This community means a lot to me, so a lot of my approaches to everything I create -- specifically these pieces for Sensory Iconoclasts -- will relate back to the community development that I've done and the community that I've grown up in and am so invested in."

Perrodin acknowledges the challenge of collaborating in two such disparate artistic mediums. "[Hintz is] going to do six plates, and I'm going to do six paintings that will literally and figuratively be a reflection of one another -- the six plates juxtaposed against the six paintings. It's hard to base something off of that without having seen it set up, so it's very much 'wait until the dish is cooked'... So we have to wait until the week of [the event], which is part of the beautiful challenge -- the collaboration. I'm excited about that. I like that challenge."

Dighero says that he and Smith are excited about collaborating again this year.

"Eve and I are working on images and foodstuffs that harken back to positive images from our childhood," Dighero says. "I love the smattering of fried chicken restaurants that run throughout the region of my hometown in southwest Missouri and southeast Kansas: Barto's in Frontenac, Kan., and Chicken Annie's and Chicken Mary's outside of Pittsburg, Kan. All have a very stylized, garlicky crust that I adore. Eve has recollections of chicken and rice from her childhood, so I'm looking at ways to combine these two very different techniques for preparing chicken -- a delicious amalgamation from two completely different perspectives of chicken from our childhoods. "

The exhibition will run from Aug. 23 until Oct. 16 at the Arts Center of the Ozarks, with a reception on Sept. 8 from 6 to 8 p.m.. A Wednesday Over Water (WOW) event at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art featuring the culinary dishes and artwork of Sensory Iconoclasts is scheduled for 6 p.m. Aug. 24.

NAN What's Up on 08/12/2016