Daily Archives: September 24, 2013

Visit to Greg Broome’s Studio 9/17

Greg Broome's delicious plate of food. It looks like cheese from here.

Greg Broome’s delicious plate of food. It looks like cheese from here.

As interesting as seeing how photographs for advertisements were made in addition to photographing moldy food, I was really interested more in how Greg Broome survives as an artist. In my lifetime, I’ve always heard that being an artist meant not earning money, not having a sustainable lifestyle, and always living on the edge. Greg Broome voiced almost similar situations; the key difference is that he seems successful at what he is doing. He mentions how there would be days or even weeks where he would be “technically unemployed”, meaning his agency was unable to find a project for him.

What does he do in his spare time? We saw a little bit of what he does during his moldy food project, but how does he come up with these ideas? It’s almost even appalling to imagine how he maintains his lifestyle during the “drought” of unemployment. Greg goes on to talk about the total opposite side of this lifestyle; the projects where he has to finish it only in a few days. It’s like living a schizophrenic lifestyle. One day you might be working on a private project that you’ve really wanted to do, the next day you’re staring down a huge project given by a rather large company with limited time and resources to do.

It can be quite disheartening to live such an erratic lifestyle, but I’ve seen and known people who persevere through such times. Can you imagine how it would be like to live such a lifestyle?

Happy (Belated) Mooncake Day!

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Just this past Thursday was “Mooncake Day” or also formally known as “Mid-Autumn Festival.” It is a traditional holiday for Chinese people to eat moon cakes on this day. There are different flavors and types of mooncakes and just recently, I began to wonder what the symbols on the cake itself meant. Ever since I was little, I didn’t question the food that was given to me. Inside the cake is usually made of red bean or lotus seed paste. The texture is thick and usually has a yolk in the center.

According to kaleidoscope.cultural-china.com, the imprints on top of the cake “symbolizes a family get-together and reflects the family culture and the special importance Chinese people attaching to the family reunion. The moon cake is not just a kind of food, but more of a cultural element deeply penetrated into Chinese people’s hearts, symbolizing family reunion and embodying spiritual feelings.” The cake was meant to be shared by a group of people, and thus is always a symbol for family union. I never knew that mooncakes had actual meaning behind just being food. It meant being part of a family and part of Chinese culture.

What other foods do you know have meaning behind it?