Coffee and donuts has been a Friday morning staple at RedLine for more than 2 years. Every Friday morning, artists, staff and guests could enjoy a Voodoo Doughnut, a cup of coffee, and a conversation in the kitchen. We want to keep that tradition going! Every Friday morning at 10 am we will send a RedLine Resident Artist, current or alumni, a Voodoo doughnut, of their choice, and a list of conversational prompts. All they have to do is take a photo, video, drawing, or provide a short written piece that responds to one of the conversational prompts that they chose and send them to us to share with you!
Our values as an organization include that we are deeply connected. Part of that connection comes from our personal relationships with each other and our community. Of course, we do that with our art, but what is missing is the interaction from our open-door culture. Hopefully #RLFridaydoughnuts can serve as a way to fill in part of the gap that has been left in our absence from the building. These vignettes will be posted on our #RedLineAtHome blog page every Friday afternoon.
From Chuck…
JC’s Fridays in the Kitchen
OR How to Gain Waist-Weight in One’s Residency at Redline
Important details not covered in the original Redline orientation: When daily stepping into the Kitchen area one can expect to always find day-old food, treats and generous portions of whatever was served the night before at a reception or rental activity. These are free and open to any RedLine Resident/ Resource Artist and, obviously, staff. These portions maintain their eat-a-bility up to the following weekend or beyond. The RedLine Official Taster (ROT) will ascertain when they are eventually to be thrown out. This person is Whit. Foods left on the table after 12 days are to then be considered glazed art and are for sale.
FRIDAY DOUGHNUT (Pronounced Dow- Nut) PROCESS:
1.) When entering the Kitchen insure that there is NOT someone behind the door. A gentle knock can suffice. However, on Fridays, if one sees JC has JUST entered the kitchen carrying a large brown unmarked bag, All rules are set aside for the first five minutes. This means one can aggressively push the door open without regard to who is behind it to obtain your preferential choices of the newly delivered donuts. Helmets and safety gear are deeply encouraged in this time frame when occupying the kitchen, as well as adaptive, memory-elastic on one’s mask. A 6 ft. span is developed on a first come first serve status. An Official 20 second timing zone, directly in front of the serving table, is enforced by Djamila or anyone with a salad for lunch who braves the kitchen floor on Fridays.
2.) It is NOT considered proper protocol to first meet JC in the parking lot on Friday mornings.
3.) Kitchen Occupancy Limit in this five minute period shifts from the usual 27 persons to, what Redrock’s Amphitheater terms “Open Seating”,catch as catch can. (See Redline Manual, page 12, column 3: Fridays with JC; or page 356, Official Redline Committee meetings)
3.) If one takes a singular donut in-hand, breaking it in half, or if particularly religious, portioning it into quarters, this method makes the donuts non-fattening. This term is known at Redline as “Friday’s Breaking Donuts”.
4.) Again, these portioned donuts can be eaten throughout the day, in which it is considered allowable, though not particularly appropriate to take a portion of someone else’s donut. If sprinkles are dropped on the table from someone else’s broken donut one should discreetly wipe them up or scrape them into your hand for future application to one’s studio work. (See in Redline Manual, page 72, column 7-8; Pointillism and its influences)
5.) If Redline staff member Emma happens to be in the kitchen during her hourly, “I’ll do the dishes now” assignment, just ignore her, as it is also a therapeutic activity. It is suggested to just walk on by her, to the broom closet, on the premise to get a broom to take back out. If you do this, lean it somewhere in one of the gallery areas in which it will be hard to find. Grabbing a quick bite into yet another donut is allowable if one is ambidextrous.
6.) If a Redline Resident or staff member happens to walk into the kitchen on a Friday and Resource Artist Chuck is in there telling a long-winded story, this is called Glazing Over. It is deemed appropriate to a.) Lean against the sink and nod b.) Sit on the table, and nod c.) Go to the floor on the premise of picking up a dropped crumb and crawl underneath the table into a fetal position, and nod D.)The standard method of escaping the Kitchen with a donut, on Fridays, if Chuck is telling JC a story, is the LMPS (Louise Martorano Phone Scenario). This is a journeyman maneuver, not for amateurs. Just carefully nestle your phone against your left ear, avoid eye-contact and walk quickly to the back sink, grabbing a doughnut as one exits… flavor is optional at this speed. A laugh is optional.
7.) It is NOT ALLOWED to eat donuts on the rear entrance steps. This is strictly enforced by Redline staff who are known to have sporadic checks on this activity, which again is known as RedLine Staff Four -Stepping (RSFS… pronounced RRR –sh-sh-PHU- Set).
We hope this short, sugar-coated guide will be helpful in this time of weekly, Friday stress. Be sure to wash your hands after reading this. Chuck Parson, Resource Artist
Kitchen Konversation response from prompts as sent from JC
Answered by Chuck Parson, current Redline Resource Artist
May 15, 2020
In the spirit of the Friday morning conversations that were so often put into play by the congregating of several of us standing around , eating donuts that JC had brought in, here is a Redline Kitchen Ramble… to a couple of the prompts.
One could easily just answer repeatedly “Donuts” to the first 7 or so questions with a major sugar buzz. Conversations in kitchens in homes, work places, at parties, even in airlines tend to be at times quick but occasionally get into much depth. I have come to value the spontaneous opportunities that at Redline have resulted in long and deep conversations about much in our lives, both related and at times significantly contrasted. This possibly is part of what Redline really is… conversations about our individual and shared lives, and why, through the vehicle of art, many of us has found a common bond but from our own reasoning and instrumentation, to share in the realm of art making.
I would chose an “Old Fashion Doughnut”.
Not because I am old fashioned (but I AM old, now, I guess, at least in physicality). But I have always loved non-embellished things; drinks, food, fashion; music and art. Secondly, the choice of an “Old Fashioned Doughnut “brought back a wave of memories from my childhood. Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, after school, from age 9-11 I had a neighborhood Donut Route. I would take orders from neighbors, (some weekly established, others I would “cold call’, unsolicited and try to develop a new client; this is a ploy I used in approaching galleries and museums throughout the country in my adult years of exhibiting and traveling all across America in my truck and trailer, hauling art.) The highest selling, requested donuts, in my memory were glazed and old fashioned. This was a working class neighborhood in Virginia, just outside Washington D.C. in the later 1950’s .My dad was “in town” (D.C.) following spies in his job as an F.B. I. agent. My mother was playing a pipe organ and directing choirs in a huge Baptist Church. I was learning the classical guitar from a Hungarian guitarist as I was reading and copying children’s books on How to Draw and Be an Artist. I sold donuts. If I didn’t sell all the donuts, delivered at noon on my two day a week route, I would literally have to “eat the loss”, meaning pay the 31 cents per half dozen of unsold donuts and my mom would have me freeze them if too many. We kids would eat oven warmed donuts in great quantities occasionally. Usually, however, I would find a way to talk people into paying the 31 cents ;( again a later ploy of selling my commercial art/ sign painting skills in cold calls that eventually translated to my fine arts world). Mrs.Woo, whose husband was a Pentagon official, always problematically payed me in 31 pennies, each time slowly going through several purses and jars in her kitchen to come up with it (Much like just a few gallery owners throughout my career, when it came to paying what was owed; they were also problematic). That was ALWAYS a pain, as I had one of those old coin dispensers that hooked on top of my belt to make change throughout my route. Summer time and warm weather I could ride my bike, where I had purchased baskets, straddling the back wheel. If lots of boxes, I’d just pull a large wagon. I learned many ways to stack these little boxes of half dozen donuts, eventually learning sequencing, as well as response to the elements. (Again, another mindset learned early on translated to my years-later art skill in packing/ loading my truck and trailer to haul artworks safely across various routes throughout America, sequenced for stopping at many places to unload or pickup works.
On one particular snowy Thursday late afternoon, when I was 11, I got snowbound on the route (a similar issue on many occasions in hauling art across America). In the winter conditions like this I would pull a sled with the boxes tied on top so they wouldn’t fall out (The previous summer I had lost a few boxes off the back of my bike and scooped them up off of the roadway and put them back in respectively marked boxes…a day after that delivery, my best friend David Collins chipped his tooth biting into one from a box his mother had purchased. He bloodied my nose the day after THAT at the bus stop; lesson learned… don’t sell damaged work). On this particular wintery day (One of my teachers had done a snow dance at the front of the classroom to hope for school cancellations for the next day) By the half way point of the route I was very late; it had gotten dark; and the plastic bags wrapped around my shoes with rubber bands over them to hold them up, had broken off with snow pack in my feet. My knock on the door at Mrs. Collin’s house resulted in she and her husband calling my parents, then pulling off my shoes and socks and putting my feet in pails of progressively cold-to-warm-to hot water to warm up my feet. (Lesson learned again; there are ALWAYS people out there who care for others).
If I was down in the RedLine kitchen this Friday I would rise up a coffee cup in a toast. On May 8, 2020 I am celebrating, with sudden awareness, my 50th anniversary of graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute. Our class of 90 graduating seniors, with a diploma designed by cartoonist/ Zap Comic Book creator R. Crumb, sent a protest telegram in-mass on that day to President Richard Nixon, as the Kent State student shootings had occurred just 4 days before. Additional riots across Kansas City and the country were resulting yet again in armed response to the whole fractured political, social and generational climate. ALL of the males graduating from KCAI had automatically lost their educational military deferments and had all been forced in the previous couple of months to go through the required Draft physicals; I was to work in yet another heavy duty Steel factory for the summer and then be on the way to Cranbrook Academy of Art, just north of Detroit to live in smoking remains of the riot-torn inner city, while studying art at this Mecca of high art and craft. I had recently received my official notification of Failure to Pass this massive military Draft Physical (which included mental).Our graduation from KCAI was met with still many significant unknowns, both personally and in the world but that one, of forced war service had finally resolved itself. The toast on this Friday, in 2020 would be that we DO get through all of this continually; my grandparent’s generational challenges, my parent’s generational challenges, now our shared challenges… it all DOES move forward and onward. Optimism is historically well founded. And art always continues.
? Can you tell, when I travel across country… my road trips provide me a time of both opportunities, experiences and now memories… all triggered by something simple , like an old fashioned donut. The kitchen at Redline has become a place to share some of these… and thank you all for your patience in listening to them!
