Two Transplants embrace the Wabi-Sabi-ishness of Rochester in Gallery Opening
One grew up among the tea plantations of the Darjeeling region of India
The other grew up in the progressive urbanism of Austin, Texas. 
One was raised in Buddhist teachings. The other came to Buddhism in his teens.
One way or another, they found themselves in Rochester.
This Friday, come check out their shared venture in the Kuma-Gama Clay Studio and Tea Bar.
Over a glass of freshly brewed hibiscus iced tea, I had the opportunity to interview them both.
Here is their full story which I profiled them in the Democrat & Chronicle:
Within Japanese culture is the aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi.
Rooted in Buddhism, this philosophy draws attention and appreciation to life’s everyday simplicities. It asks the follower to seek out beauty in unobvious places, such as the gnarled and twisted texture of a tree branch or the irregular jaggedness of a stone.
In many ways, Rochester is a Wabi-Sabi city, says potter Cody Kroll, making it the perfect place to create his imperfectly shaped sculpture and Japanese tea ware.
“Rochester is … not perfect, and it is unfinished,” says Kroll, an Austin, Texas, native. “That’s the way I make art, by always keeping in mind that nothing is perfect and nothing is permanent.”
Kroll was working out of a small studio in the Hungerford Building and selling his work on etsy.com.
While online, he met Niraj Lama, a native of the Darjeeling region of India, who was selling his Happy Earth Tea online. Lama is a newcomer to Rochester, and when the two realized they lived in the same city, they met in person and a business venture began.
They will open Kuma-Gama Clay Studio and Happy Earth Tea Bar in a larger space, Suite 228, in the Hungerford, 1115 Main St., during First Friday this week.
Kroll’s work will be on display, and Lama will provide a history of tea, as well as tastings.
Kroll’s interest in Japanese culture came early in his life. His grandfather was a Marine stationed in Japan and brought him some pottery. Kroll studied fine arts at Eastern Kentucky University and State University of New York at Buffalo. He has been influenced by 16th-century and modern Japanese glazing techniques from artists such as Kanzaki Shiho and Suzuki Tomio.
In the spartan space of the Kuma-Gama Clay Studio, light streams through industrial glass block windows onto whitewashed walls. From outside, one can hear the clank and whistle of a passing train on the railroad tracks behind the building. Cinderblocks support a shelving system of wooden boards that display Kroll’s creations.
On these shelves, the visitor shouldn’t go looking for a matching tea set of identical cups fashioned with traditional scenes.
In his own primitive “impressionistic” style, Kroll strives to capture the fleetingness of a single moment on the surface of his earth-toned works, sometimes in a glaze that seemed to be fired in a kiln while it was still dripping, sometimes in unglazed parts of a piece that capture his fingerprints.
Though each piece is a one-of-a-kind creation, when a few are assembled, they suggest an eclectic harmony and the ideal vessels for a formal Japanese tea ceremony or the enjoyment of a single cup of tea.
Kroll says because Japan is an island nation, each has its own distinct style and uses resources found nearby. So too does Kroll, who only uses locally dug clays, such as what is found at the bottom of the pond of the Folk Art Guild of Rochester in Middlesex, Yates County. The glazes Kroll uses are made from ash taken from wood-fired ovens of local restaurants.
Everything about Kuma-Gama Clay Studio takes sustainability into consideration. The Hungerford Building has been repurposed from an old fruit-packing plant to a place where local artists work and live. Tea is served from an old piece of furniture found outside the hallway in the studio. It was refurbished into a tea bar and adorned with polished tin ceiling tiles also found in the building.
When Kroll moved to Buffalo in the early 2000s to earn his master’s degree, he thought all of New York would resemble Manhattan. He says he has grown to appreciate Rochester’s artistic and cultural riches and its potential to grow as a creative hub.
“To me, Rochester is what Austin was 25 years ago — a nice, yet-to-be discovered city along a river. I actually like that Rochester is a little depressed,” says Kroll, referring to the Buddhist outlook of accepting the high and low phases of life and knowing that each will pass.
While Kroll’s art is based on appreciating imperfections, Lama’s craft in making the perfect cup of tea depends on the precision of timing, water temperature and the cut of leaf.
Growing up in the foothills of the Himalayas, covered with tea plantations, Lama was raised in a culture of tea. In the country that is the world’s biggest consumer of the beverage, tea was part of everyday life. Though Lama worked as a journalist in India, the tea import business keeps him connected to his homeland.
“Tea nourishes the soul. It takes some time and patience to calm down to enjoy the subtleties of the flavors of tea. While coffee delivers that jolt to get you through the day, tea offers the drinker a tranquil alertness,” Lama says.
Together, Kroll and Lama hope to foster a “tea society” at the studio, where tea lovers and those simply curious about tea can learn about tea ceremony traditions and the art of making the beverage.
Kroll and Lama see the repurposing of the Hungerford Building as symbolic to the revitalization of Rochester. Just as Lama’s tea is a symbol of welcoming hospitality in his culture, so it has been with the “open, welcoming” nature of the people he has met in Rochester since moving here with his wife and two small children just 18 months ago.
“Rochester to me as an outsider has been a very gentle, welcoming place,” Lama says
Photo Challenge: Geometry
This post is long overdue, but WordPress put up the perfect photo challenge to (kick me in the pants and get writing) I mean, get me motivated:
What is urban? This is what true urbanism should be. A blend of city and nature on a perfect summer day.
I went to a lot of places over the summer, but my favorite destination, for always, remains:
New York City.
Why?
It’s a place where I grew up, and you’d think I would be tired of it already. Seen it all. Been there. Done that.
That’ll never happen. Because there is always something New to discover in New York City. Even for us natives.
For example, in our annual summer visit to New York City, we toured the High Line.
Opened in recent years and built on refurbished elevated rail lines, the High Line lets the visitor walk the thin line between street level and the heights of skyscrapers. It is a strip of gardens, fountains and orchards that blooms right between steel, brick and glass and wooden water towers. It repurposes an older structure that would have otherwise been torn down and instead has been transformed into a public space and one of the best places to snap pictures in all of New York City.
It goes on for about 20 blocks above the West Side’s meat-packing district and there are plans to extend the High Line to more of the old abandoned El.
With fountains, flowers and musical and cultural events, all set in a shining beacon of sustainable public space, to me it’s the best 20 blocks you can walk right now in NYC.
I shot these photos on my dad’s Nikon:
An Interview with inspiring artist Sarah Wisbey, inspired by my daughter, the artist
This is a self-portrait of my daughter
This is a self-portrait of graphic artist Sarah Wisbey:
One day,
visited 
in her high school visual arts class to share with them her experiences as a professional graphic artist.
That prompted my daughter to ask me something very unusual.
She wanted to accompany me on my next trip to the grocery store.
She was not necessarily going with me to help me pick out groceries, she was there to look at art.
Once inside our supermarket, Wegman’s food markets, she could not wait to go visit the pasta aisle.
My daughter was downright giddy
“Mom, today in art class, I met the woman who drew the illustrations on these red boxes!”
She then pulled me over to the coffee aisle pointing out other packages that Sarah Wisbey illustrated.
Later that month my daughter interviewed Sarah and how she got started in her career in graphic design. Sarah also took the time to look at some of my daugher’s most recent compositions.
So, when I needed to write a feature about a prominent person from Brighton, I knew just the person to profile.
Here is my piece in the D&C about Wisbey. Thought it would be best to keep it here on my blog, for you never know when the links will go dead.
Thank you again Sarah for, inspiring my daughter, and your time for developing this piece:
It’s not often that an artist cooks the subject she is painting, especially when the artist does not like to cook. However, when Wegmans Food Markets hired Brighton resident Sarah Wisbey to work on the packaging for their pasta line, the freelance illustrator wanted to perfectly capture the shape of spaghetti, the color of a campanelle and the texture of tortellini.
Shortly after she took the job, she found herself at the supermarket with 20 different boxes of pasta in her shopping cart.
“The cashier wondered why I was buying so much pasta. My children wondered why they were waking to the smell of cooked pasta every morning,” said Wisbey.
Overall, Wisbey illustrated 27 different kinds of pasta — from egg noodles to frozen ravioli. Her colorful illustrations are also on the labels that entice Wegmans shoppers to try flavors of coffee like orange cappuccino, raspberry hazelnut or crème brulee.
Wisbey saturates her illustrations with color, playful black lines and gaps of white space that suggest a sparkling light. Her food illustrations, like the label for the orange cappuccino, emit a tempting juicy quality that seems to drip off the packaging.
Wisbey jokingly blames her less-than-perfect visual depth perception for her flat illustrations. Since her earliest explorations in art, her style has been shaped from the books she read in the children’s sections of bookstores and libraries. She was drawn to the vibrant, simple lines and collage work of Eric Carle and later, Fauvist painters such as Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin.
When she started out as an artist, Wisbey attempted to capture Carle’s watercolor collage technique, though she admitted the result was “messy, tedious and frustrating.”
“Watercolor can be unpredictable. One wrong brushstroke and everything can turn out looking like mud,” she said.
The “aha” moment came when Wisbey realized she could achieve the look of the collage by painting swaths of color onto single sheets of paper, which she scans into her Mac computer and manipulates in Adobe Photoshop.
“In Photoshop, I can easily tweak the colors, cut and paste shapes and manipulate them into the ideal composition. The white gaps are just as important to me as the color. This gives my illustrations a light, airy feel,” she said.
But it takes more than talent to make it as an artist.
She said to be successful as a graphic artist as opposed to a fine artist, one must think of a project from a collaborative rather than an individual standpoint.
“The difference between being a fine artist and a graphic artist is that you are creating not just for yourself but for a client. You must know their parameters and expectations.”
She credits her ability to work on a team to her 11 years of experience at Rochester’s Icon Graphics. There, she learned the business side of art, the importance of sticking to a deadline and how to effectively collaborate.
It’s been four years since Wisbey embarked on her own freelance illustration business. When Wisbey was commissioned by Wegmans to work with their in-house design team for the supermarket’s pasta line, the red color of the box, the style of lettering and even the illustrated steam were already in place. She was strictly charged with designing the look of each variety of pasta.
“Wegmans has a style that really meshes with mine. They put a high value on illustration. I love that they give me a basic direction on a project and just let me run with it,” she said.
Her advice to those seeking a creative career is to become immersed in any artistic resources available. College students and recent graduates should get as much paid and unpaid experience as possible. Most importantly, just keep creating.
“Draw every day just for yourself. That’s how you will develop your own style. The creative process is a way of life.”
Add your thoughts here… It’s July fourth and I’m taking some time off from blogging. But I think back to what I was doing last year at this time, spending time on Coney Island.
And how could I not visit Coney Island?
After all, it’s en route in our Island hopping tour – between Staten Island and Long Island.
My family plunked down its roots in Coney Island, on 21st Street. This is where my great-grandparents on my grandmother’s side lived. My grandmother with her three sisters and one brother.
This is the subway train stop that takes you to the boardwalk. The very spot where my grandmother and her sisters would stand and offer visitors and beachgoers a clean place to shower and change after beachgoing at their apartment – all for a quarter.
On the boardwalk, there are signs of souvenir stores that are so old they advertise Suntan Oil – NOT sunscreen, or sunblock – but good, old-fashioned melanoma inducing suntan Oil.
This is the famed Coney Island boardwalk. On this spot – or around here somewhere – my grandmother met my grandfather and…
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Feeling at Home – Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival
Eastman School of Music faculty member Clay Jenkins performs at a free Jazz concert at Eastman Hall (thanks, mom for taking the photos).
The Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival, featuring headliners like Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Rollins, Bonnie Raitt, Nora Jones, and yes, even wild and crazy Guy Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, has put Rochester, NY, on the map as one of the nation’s finest places for jazz.
Although the festival marks its 11th year, this is the first I was able to make it out. And all the tents, free music, food and festivities are 10 minutes from my house.
What’s been keeping me away? I’ve had three good reasons.
Our three children over these years have kept us plenty busy in June with evening soccer and Little League games and concerts of their own.
As we packed up our lawn chairs into the car to head for the field, my empty nested neighbor and her companion would don their festival passes and head downtown where music, paid and free, pours out of a dozen venues.
I’ll admit it, I’m not much of a soccer mom, and I was envious. I am far more at home in a crowd listening to music than I am on the sidelines of a soccer game.
As it turns out, my kids would actually rather pick up an instrument than dribble a ball down a field. Luckily, Rochester is the right town for both pursuits.
So, this year, we finally went, with all the kids. The three are all musicians in their own right.
- My older son loves to “shred it” on his electric guitar that he plays in the Twelve Corners Middle School Band. He also plays clarinet, but he’d rather play guitar any hour of the day.
- My daughter will next year play French Horn in Brighton High School’s Symphonic Band
- My younger just started piano lessons this year. His teacher has nurtured several young musicians that have already played Carnegie Hall before the age of 18.
In Brighton, a suburb of Rochester, my kids not only have an excellent academic education, but a solid musical education as well. For three years now, NAMM has chosen Brighton as one of the nation’s best communities for music education.
So, have my kids sit through 90 minutes of jazz? No problem. They have developed enough appreciation to sit and enjoy Monday’s Eastman Scholarship Concert in Kodak Hall at Eastman theatre:
I looked up at the golden ceiling
Kodak Hall at the Eastman Theater in Rochester has been the place for free jazz concerts performed by student musicians this week
knowing that my children’s’ high school graduation may take place in this great hall.
For one of the first times since moving here in 2000, I sat in this hall, for free, showing off to my parents the best Rochester has to offer, and felt I was a part of this city. Rochester, a city I barely knew anything about a decade ago, is one of the country’s best places for music.
I also feel at home here now because at the Jazz festival, as my neighbor with the festival pass says, going to the jazz festival is as much about running into people you know as it is about the music.
That night, after listening to student musicians, some who we knew personally, we ran into friends and classmates, track teammates, and band mates as we strolled along East Avenue and made our way through the tents on Gibbs Street.
Last night, husband and I were kid free. And we went back for more:
The Barrel House Blues Band performed for free at the RG&E Fusion Stage
Then, with throngs of others, we danced and sang to Toronto’s Soul Stew:
did you ever think there were this many people in Rochester who like to go out?
For a complete change of pace, when we had enough of the crowds, we ducked into an alleyway and discovered Blackdog Recording studios, where we were invited in down two flights of stairs treated to a free private concert by local pianist Mike Vadala:
Piano man Mike Vadala
Rochester, you’ve got two more nights of free music in the streets, so what are you waiting for? Go out & enjoy.
Cleaning out and Letting Go
“Quick, someone SOMEONE open the door to the garage!”
My daughter’s voice boomed down the staircase. I didn’t appreciate her barking orders at me.
After all, that’s my job. Why couldn’t she open the door herself?
I followed the sound of her voice and soon realize why she couldn’t open the door.
Her arms were full of a year’s worth of notes. Her entire Freshman year of high school. A tree’s worth of it, was piled in her arms and about to topple over.
“I think I killed a whole tree this year,” she said.
Fortunately, it will all be recycled, I told her.
To follow suit, my husband then got rid of his own notes. Five years of notes he took in graduate school at the University of California at Berkeley. Notes he hung on to for nearly 17 years. They overflowed the recycle bin. A summer wind picked up sheet after sheet of chemical and mathematical equation and scattered them along our block. We had to go chase the papers down the street to secure them with a rock for the next day’s recycling pick up.
Summer brings on a whole new pace. This summer, all three of my kids will be at summer camp. But this summer there is the potential for an even more cataclysmic shift in store for my family. I can only write this now because all the important people have been informed.
Now, as the summer starts and the house begins to quiet, all we can do is wait.
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Photo Challenge: Today
In answer to today’s Photo Challenge: Today, I snapped this on my iTouch: a long-overdue wet day in Rochester. Umbrella dripping, some items left out to dry in vain. Soaked barbecue cover. Green shade garden in the background.
I’ll post this one more time. Rochester/Brighton folks, take a walk up Hoyt Place this weekend … you can pay your respects and discover a historical gem walking distance from your house.
I have a Facebook friend who lives right around the corner from me. In the privacy of our own kitchens, we use Facebook all day to stave off the isolation that comes with being a freelance writer or a painter. We chat and exchange ideas and opinions, sometimes the same, sometimes different, on Facebook nearly every day but rarely get together in real life. A teacher and avid photographer as well as mother and artist, Carol blogs at watchmepaint.
This week, when Carol graciously shared my column about finding the true meaning of Memorial Day on her Facebook page, she added a comment saying she would pay her respects by visiting a little-known cemetery in Brighton where there are graves that predate the Civil War. She described where it was to me and I still could not picture how a graveyard could exist hidden away one of Rochester’s busiest…
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This is a favorite dish of mine that I rarely get to make at home because I’m the only one in the house of the rising picky eaters who likes it. Phewey on them! Don’t let that stop you from trying this amazing vegetarian Israeli dish, straight from my favorite Israeli chef Tami who now works at Wegmans down in Maryland. Check out her blog chutzpahinthekitchen, you won’t be sorrry!
Shakshuka (שקשוקה) is a traditional and very popular Israeli breakfast. Most restaurants and chefs have their own version of this savory tomato and pepper stew, with freshly poached eggs. I like to serve it for dinner,or brunch with some buttery toast and a nice light and leafy salad. It is a great way to incorporate more vegetables into your diet, and is a great option if you are vegetarian or if you are having vegetarian guests over. You can choose to bake the dish in a large baking dish and serve it family style, but prefer to serve it in personal baking dishes.
For 4 people you will need:
1 red pepper, medium dice
1 green pepper, medium dice
1 Vidalia onion, medium dice
2 cloves garlic, chopped
4 tsp olive oil
1 can (24 oz) of diced tomatoes or, if they are in season, 4 cups diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp red…
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Stacy Gittleman 