You Are What You Eat (or You are How You Remembered You Ate)

Joanne Steinhardt is an artist whose current project, The Cookbook Project, examines memory and the emotional connection created when preparing, sharing, and eating food through the mode of a community-built cookbook. Her use of non-traditional bookmaking materials such as baking sheets, aluminum foil, and knitting plays with the viewer’s definition of “book.” 

What are the meals you remember? Did you meet your partner over food or drink? What do you remember about the times in your life when you “broke bread” with other people? Did you celebrate, mourn, connect, study, or perhaps were alone with a pint of ice-cream?  She will be sharing the ideas of community and connection that drive the project. Joanne will open discussion on the role our emotional connection to food plays in processes of creation, communication, and marketing. She will also show everyone how to make their own zine.

Ms Steinhardt made the conscious decision to focus fully on her practice as an artist in 2012. Leaving her full-time teaching position, she spent time taking stock of her past work and it was during this time she rediscovered the book.  Her use of materials such as baking sheets, tree stumps, found objects, and knitting shows deep consideration of material as well as plays with the viewer’s sense of exactly what is a book. She is actively producing, showing, lecturing, and giving workshops that revolve around bookmaking and community. Joanne had worked as a professional photographer and 1998 she began teaching. By 2005 she achieved tenure at the University of Tampa. Her specialty was in the merger of traditional story telling through image making and emerging technologies.  Her artistic scholarship moved to include textual based projections, material focused sculpture, and data driven interactive site specific installation. This work was the focus of her MFA which was awarded to her by The Maine College of Art. All her work was attentive to interpersonal communication and emotional connection. Joanne has shown and worked in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Maine, France, Argentina, and Italy. She travels extensively and when not on residency works from her home studio.