THE PROCESS

We had the opportunity to sit down with author and illustrator Lindsay Gardner to talk about art, her sources of inspiration, and her new book, “Why We Cook: Women on Food, Identity, and Connection.” Lindsay sketched every original illustration in her book using Blackwing pencils.

How did your art journey begin and what led you to pursue it as a profession?

It’s only been recently that I’ve been able to look back at the last 20 years of my life and be able to put the pieces together. My undergrad experience studying Literature and Studio Art was formative in developing my interest in storytelling. After undergrad, I moved to San Francisco and began working for arts education non-profits. Eventually, I went to graduate school and received my MFA in Painting. When I look back at my time in grad school, I don’t regret it, but it definitely burned me out. I enjoyed what I learned about critical theory and big picture art-making, but in some ways, I feel like it drained my intuition.

After all, was said and done, I felt like I had very little energy left to give to painting in a pure way. I ended up teaching elementary school and had put off painting for nearly two and a half years. During that time, I gave birth to my first daughter and spent a whole year at home with her which helped motivate me to draw and paint again. I remember having a conversation during grad school with an artist that I admired named Rex Ray and he told me, “You go to grad school and you spend all this time studying, and then you spend another 10 years trying to forget everything you learned.” I feel like the more time that passed, I was able to return to art in a compelling and exciting way that felt unburdened which eventually opened the door to me starting my business.

Can you tell us about your current project and what motivated you to take it on?

My latest project is a book that I wrote and illustrated called “Why We Cook: Women on Food, Identity, and Connection.” It is a collection of over a hundred essays, interviews, and recipes from women who are changing the world of food.

Cooking has always been important to me, but as I became a parent and started to adjust to life as a family, my relationship with cooking shifted with it. I began to examine what cooking meant to me, why it’s so important, and how it’s wrapped up in this bigger sense of female identity. I started to see how cooking was an interconnected part of my creative process and it began showing up in a lot of my work. I began having conversations with friends about this topic and it just seemed like so many people in my life had a mutual interest in discussing it. As my interest grew, I searched for a book related to this specific subject and was not able to find any, leading to me ask myself if this was something I could possibly take on. So, I just began to open up the conversation to larger circles — talking to professional chefs and other women in the industry, and things just began to merge. I had always loved doing research so that along with having a concrete reason to reach out to people and interview them helped bring everything together for what is now Why We Cook.

What do you draw on for inspiration?

Something I do pretty much every time, no matter what project I’m working on, is slow down and try to notice the minute details of everyday life that are so often overlooked. That was especially true for this book, as cooking is one of those everyday things. It’s sometimes a ritual that can take on meaning, other times it can feel like a burden. I like dissecting how these snapshots of everyday life are multi-faceted and can take on a deeper meaning.

With the intersection of women, cooking, and art, what do you hope readers take away from reading your book?

I think in a big picture way, I hope it prompts people to ask more questions in their own lives. I think there are just so many things that we can all learn from listening to peoples’ stories and I believe that cooking is an easy avenue for people to connect. Whether at the personal or professional level, women’s stories in food have not been told in the same depth or even at all. I believe that there is a lot of empowerment in just listening to women tell their stories.

Is there a specific story in your book that just completely blew you away?

In talking with all of these women, I was able to find connecting threads in disparate stories. One of the things that particularly blew me away, especially because it is different having it be so different from my own personal experience, is that so many of these stories about food from inspiring voices in the book have to do with migration or immigration, and explore the powerful relationship between geographic movement, food, and memory.

How did you discover Blackwing and how do you use them?

I found out about Blackwing through one of my favorite artists, Carson Ellis. I saw that she was using them and thought to myself, if she uses them, I have to try them. I love the way they feel when they hit the paper, it’s a different texture compared to other pencils — the smoothness and the gradation from light to dark.

Is there a quote or a piece of work that inspires your creative process?

There’s a Joan Didion quote that goes, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live…” For me, it underscores this feeling that there’s an innate human instinct to write down or portray our stories in art. I think it perfectly conveys humanity’s impulse for creativity.

Another quote that inspires me is one by Georgia O’Keefe, “Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small – we haven’t time – and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time.” This quote resonates with me because I feel like I can often be impatient

with myself and my creative process. Those words bring me comfort reminding me that I am just one person in a gigantic universe. Sometimes I just need to slow down and realize that my work is never really ever done.