What Artists Eat – Details, episodes & analysis

Francesca Gonzales is many things. She’s a psychology student, musician, songwriter, vocalist, key-tar player and facilitator. She’s a staunch advocate for artists’ mental health and finds herself constantly thinking about how she can help artists figure out what’s best for themselves in an industry that leaves many people miserable and burnt out.

Francesca is obsessed with promoting and facilitating mental health for artists. She started out as a musician and really wanted to connect with people. As she pursued music, she found herself alone a lot of the time and it felt wrong. She soon found that many people were feeling the same way, so she created Breakfast Club meet-ups as a way to come together with her peers and foster an environment where artists could support each other and learn from each other.

You can sign up to Breakfast Club events via Fran's instagram https://www.instagram.com/francescagonzales___/

You can find Fran's Chicken Pilaf recipe on our website!

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

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Rochelle Siemienowicz grew up as a strict Seventh Day Adventist. Her first experiences of art (particularly writing) was the bible. In terms of food, she went through a renaissance in culinary life when she left the church and was in her early 20’s.

Her latest novel ‘Double Happiness’ is a love story loosely inspired by her own journey of polyamory.

“The journey of writing this latest book has been one of learning to set boundaries and learning to priortise my own need to create over other people’s needs” - she says.

Rochelle believes that food and art are both about nourishment of the body and the soul, sharing, expressing one's individuality, and sometimes for her: rebellion.

You can find Rochelle's Upside-Down Pear & Almond Flan recipe on our website!

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Support What Artists Eat on Patreon!

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Our interview begins with a burping poodle and ends with the beautiful Turkish phrase “health to your hands” which really sums up the essence of Olivia Cummings, founder and jewellery maker behind Cleopatra’s Bling. She will take you on a poetic journey to explore the mythology behind Greek amulets, and then ground you with tales of the logistics behind making her dog Alfonso’s birthday cake. This suits us just fine.

Yes, Olivia is a jeweller, but she’s also devoted to food. For her, food is a connector and a nourishing, fortifying force. She finds meaning and satisfaction in the act of cooking for the people she loves and in the act of sharing food around a table. She favours simplicity in the kitchen for herself day by day, but will go all out when it comes to others.

We end our chat with laughs about a kitchen disaster story that she’s still not over, and Olivia’s admission that she’s “a sicko with butter” - she has been known to give people a cracker with so much butter on it that they’ve assumed it was cheese.

You can find Olivia's Flourless Cacao & Orange Cake recipe on our website!

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Links to Olivia's work and anything else we chatted about:

• Cleopatra’s Bling website
• Cleopatra’s Bling Instagram
• Cleopatra’s Bling podcast
• Cleopatra’s Bling Collingwood Store
• Ramen documentary
• Hanefi Yeter artist website

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We couldn’t fit all of Tiphaine De Fleurette Hunter-Brown’s career titles into our, well, title, so we didn’t even try. This powerhouse of a woman is a true slashie and we know that the list of titles will keep growing on a weekly, if not daily basis.

Tiphaine is the creative director of The Project Space, a creative arts facility in Apollo Bay, Creative Director of Floreo Creative Web + Design and co-director of Videokills, a video and performance art-based collaborative network and festival.

When starting The Project Space, Tiphaine's plan was to open an “everything space” for her community in rural Victoria. Her own feelings of isolation pushed her to create a space for creativity and possibility and open it up to others as a community resource. And that’s how we met Tiphaine, through her project “The Development Lab” where we were artists in residence in 2021.

Tiph’s latest addition to her creative practice is slinging luscious Belizean food from her food truck, Jungle Drifter. It’s fascinating how when you’re an adult, you often just want to share the things you loved when you were a kid. Jungle Drifter was the natural progression for Tiph, as she needed some breathing space from her other pursuits, but still wanted to be connected to her community.

Tiphaine shares it all with us, including her recipe for Belizean Fry Jacks, which is on our website.

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Links to Tiphaine's work and anything else we chatted about:

• Floreo Creative insta
• Floreo Creative Website
• Jungle Drifter coffee and food van insta
• Click here to hire The Project Space on Creative Spaces
• Sam Gant

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You might know ceramicist Lyn Sendeckyj as Sailorboi. Why Sailorboi? It’s just one of those great nicknames that stuck. He has always tried to find something to do with his hands and for 13 years he’s been up to his elbows in clay and glazes as the owner of Sailorboi Studio, his pottery school in Brunswick. From there, he not only creates his own very personal and often hilarious ceramic pieces, with his fabulous chihuahua Cindy by his side, he teaches pottery classes and workshops.

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Links

• Insta https://www.instagram.com/sailorboi.studio/?hl=en
• Web https://www.sailorboi.com/
• Ottolenghi https://ottolenghi.co.uk/recipes
• Kylie https://www.kylie.com/
• ED support and more in resources https://www.eatingdisorders.org.au/

Tips / Takeaways:

• Want some great cheap ceramic tools? Head to the kitchen section of your local op shop and dig around for some interesting items that you can use on your clay
• Feeling brave? Make art about something you’re embarrassed about and share it with people you trust and can laugh with 
• Need a soundtrack for your next cooking adventure? Here’s a start https://open.spotify.com/artist/4RVnAU35WRWra6OZ3CbbMA?si=K0we8nC2RVea47bX3epNVA

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With beginnings in sculpture and conceptual art in the UK, Kayleigh Heydon moved to Melbourne ten years ago and has since incorporated painting, ceramics and music into her practice.

Don't be offended, but you're probably making your humble cup of tea wrong. When we investigate the subtleties of tea making with Manchester born and raised Kayleigh, it gets heated pretty quick. She's from the North and she needs it strong. Whilst apparently no one wants to be "The Tea Master" in Britain (too much pressure to be the person making everyone's cuppa), they certainly have an opinion on how each one should be made. According to Kayleigh, it can get very political (depending on where you're from).

Something that struck us when we began unpacking the Starving Artist myth were the realities of being an artist in Australia in contrast to the UK. She's very aware of how the myth can be used to "other" people in conversations or interactions and finds it an awful way of devaluing someone who is a professional creative. We all agree that it can be an easy way to create a quick and unbalanced hierarchy where the artist is always at the bottom.

We discuss the elephant in the industry - the gender divide between representation and support of male artists and female / non binary artists.

When it comes to her favourite places in the city of Melbourne, the Preston Market is in her all time top five destinations. You already know how much we love the Preston Market, and it was wonderful to chat about specifics - Kayleigh loves chatting to her favourite butcher and asking for tips and recipe-specific cuts of meat. It's such a crucial community meeting place and we share a collective moment of respect and alarm at the current situation regarding the proposed destruction of the market.

Grab a meticulously made cup of tea and join us as Kayleigh shares her green mango and prawn salad, her kitchen super power and the most epic kitchen disaster story that it left us speechless...

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Links to Kayleigh's work and anything else we chatted about:

• Kayleigh's website
• Kayleigh's instagram
• Artist Brendan Huntly
• Favourite cook - Clare Scrine
• Deuce - Wild Type
• https://www.savetheprestonmarket.com/

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Feeling a bit full from a few weeks of snacking on our past interviews? Here's our first Palate Cleanser, an audio journal by our very own Zoltan Fecso . Here's Zoltan's visit to his favourite local market, the Preston Market. A short story of food, place, the senses & community.

Click here for more information about the Preston Market, and here to save the Preston Market from being destroyed by development. Skip straight to the petition here.

Tag us in your next market adventure using #whatartistseat and if you make any of our past guests recipes be sure to tag us and the recipe name too! You can find more info about us and our guests via https://www.whatartistseat.com.au/

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram

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Artist Lily Nicholson grew up connected to the Land and aware of its gifts. It wasn't just for growing food - she found in it endless creative inspiration. On family trips she would draw maps of her experiences, especially those connected to Nature.

After attending art school far from home and often finding herself living off beans, she and her partner once again found themselves drawn back to Yuin Land, where they live with their boys and where Lily has a home studio with extraordinary views of the bush. Throughout our chat, we discuss navigating career choices, food and nourishment, Mothering, day job-ing, covid lockdowns, bushfires, money and more.

She tells us how to tear watercolour paper perfectly and how her Mum Eve's "Granny Cake" has been with her almost weekly for her whole life.

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Find Lily on instagram @lilyjohannah

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When we asked Giuliano Ferla of FERLA to describe himself and his practice, he had an interesting way of explaining his craft. He's definitely a musician and a lyricist, but in the past he wasn't sure if he could call himself a poet. For Giuls, it's the combo of putting poetry to music that's important to him. He feels that "there's a gravitas to the title of poet that doesn't fit..." but he seeks to redefine it. He's settled on being a reluctant, flippant and flamboyant poet.

If you know the band FERLA, you'll probably know FERLA PASSATA, the most wonderful band merch on God's green earth.

The romantic ideal of the suffering and 'Starving Artist" was something that Giuls was swept up in as a younger man. The idea that struggling was a rite of passage was part of his narrative, and he was warmed by the nostalgia. Whilst the romance for suffering for one's art has cooled, he still believes that as an artist "you need to sacrifice an element of security" to be able to commit to your craft.

For Giuls, cooking is nourishment for the soul and he is still so moved by the meals that sustained him as a young boy. Our chat with him was too short, as always, but we felt deeply nourished afterwards, and upon listening, we hope you do too.

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Links to Giuls' work and anything else we chatted about:

• FERLA Website
• FERLA Instagram
• FERLA Bandcamp
• FERLA Spotify
• Musician Cate le Bon
• Salt Fat Acid Heat
• Brenta Meats for pork and fennel sausage
• Mukka Indian restaurant on Brunswick Street (Giuls loves their Butter Chicken)

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Lorna Crane is the real deal. She’s a mixed media artist who has been exhibiting for 40 years and has been a practising artist her entire life, whilst working in between. Fibre has been a big part of her work for a long time and  “even in my earlier paintings I would collage in a piece of jute or hessian or a bit of cloth as well, because for me, cloth holds a memory, it’s something that, when we’re born, we get snuggled into a piece of cloth and it comforts us…”. 

Lorna started making her own brushes after a residency in Venice with Allison B. Cooke, and then became known as “the brush maker”. The urge to make brushes goes back to her art school days, when she saw a documentary on Arthur Boyd’s work and processes. She was inspired by his huge canvases and that he was using his own handmade brushes - the splashing motions being particularly inspiring.

As her career progressed, Lorna found that artist residencies became increasingly crucial to her, with her preference being self funded residencies, where there is more freedom and autonomy.

If you take anything from our chat with Lorna, we hope it’s the inspiration to colour outside the lines and absolutely break the rules. 

Find us @whatartistseat on Instagram and our website www.whatartistseat.com.au

Links to Lorna's work and anything else we chatted about:

• LORNA’S WEBSITE
• LORNA’S INSTAGRAM
• LORNA’S COURSE
• THE CHURCHILL TRUST
• BUNDANON RESIDENCY
• SHIELA HICKS ARTIST
• ALLISON B COOKE ARTIST

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