Cookin’ up community

Art, music and food are brought together in MFA candidate Lexa Walsh’s Meal Ticket exhibition, which will be on display from Nov. 28 through Dec. 9 in Portland State’s AB Lobby Gallery.

“I use music and food in my practice as my way to get people together, to celebrate communities and build relationships, to start conversations and create identities,” Walsh said.

Meal Ticket is two things.

“It is the name of this exhibition of community cookbooks, which I have turned into one book for my thesis. It is both a cookbook and songbook,” Walsh said. “The exhibition has blown up recipes on oil cloth posters and a community cookbook library, as well as a table where you can enjoy a meal.”

Walsh strategically placed the table in the exhibition as a means to encourage social interaction and, of course, food consumption.

“I want people to feel like they can come in and eat their lunch,” Walsh said.

Meal Ticket is also a project that Walsh does once a month at the Portland Art Museum, where she is the artist-in-residence for the museum’s education department.

“I do a monthly luncheon for the museum staff called Meal Ticket,” Walsh said. “Staff from all departments come together. This encourages them to foster cross-departmental conversation.”

During these luncheons, Walsh seeks to create a temporary nonhierarchical utopia where the staff can enjoy the meal she cooks for them in the company board room and “get away from it all” for an hour.

“In the meantime, they are doing a recipe exchange that doubles as a conversation starter, which in turn raises questions like, ‘Where did you come from?’” Walsh said.

Walsh has collaborated with many people in a multitude of diverse areas to compose the cookbooks that make up Meal Ticket.

“The cookbooks are a way to capture the essence of people,” Walsh said. “The real artwork is the experience of having the meal together. The cookbook is a collective memoir of that experience, and it is an ethnographic study of the group that created it.”

Growing up in a large family sparked Walsh’s love for food and community. The majority of her work focuses on these themes.

“My work is about using social interaction as a medium,” Walsh said. “Relationship building, community building and generosity are the essence of my work, not objects.”

“She loves to cook and bring people together around meals,” said Jennifer Delos Reyes, a graduate advisor for the Portland State art department. “This project is a great way to bring those two strong aspects of her art practice together.”

Walsh’s work is largely a byproduct of her eight years living in a collectively operated art center in Czech Republic.

“Coloration and group work were the essence of all of the projects that happened,” Walsh said. “I was one of the kitchen managers, so I would be cooking a lot of different meals for a large number of people on a low budget.”

Music is another driver of Walsh’s work. After moving to Oakland, Calif., in 1988, Walsh, a self-taught musician, began to infiltrate the music community.

“I’m in two all-women bands,” Walsh said. “One is an a cappella group based in Czech Republic, and the other is a fully instrumental group in Oakland.”

Walsh began studying at Portland State fall 2009. She chose the university because she wanted to work with Delos Reyes and assistant art professor Harrell Fletcher. Previously, Walsh had attended Parsons the New School for Design in New York City for two years before transferring to California College of the Arts, where she earned her undergraduate degree.

“I went to art school in New York, which is where I actually learned how to cook,” she said. “I was at a waitressing job where I was required to cook breakfast and soup. I had to teach myself, but it came really naturally.”

After moving to California, Walsh’s continued to cultivate her culinary expertise: “In California, it’s really easy to cook. All of the ingredients are right there.”

Reyes said that Meal Ticket is in keeping with Walsh’s interests.

“Even the writing that will be in the show is in the form of a community cookbook,” Reyes said. “It’s interesting when artists think about alternative forms to inseminate their work.”