We swung through the home and studio of San Francisco based artists Kelly Tunstall and Ferris Plock. The married couple are putting the finishing touches on the work for their upcoming food-centric show Edible Complex opening at FFDG on Friday, June 22nd (7-10pm). We spoke of San Francisco's love affair with food, got into their working practices, saw what makes them tick and how they keep up with their lively 2 year old son, Brixton while enjoying a couple Coronas.
Your upcoming show at
FFDG, opening on June 22nd, focuses a lot on San Francisco's intense food culture. How do you guys, as a family, fit in? Do you eat out a lot?
Ferris: Well... we order a lot of food in... Having a 2 year old with an attention span of 10 seconds means that when we eat out, we often eat
in shifts... We eat a lot in Japantown because our son Brixton really loves to run around there and he loves to eat sushi.
Kelly: We also have a very unique place that we're coming from- being kind of insiders and outsiders of the food bit at this point in our lives. I love so many places, and we've been lucky to be tangentially and directly involved in many efforts.
It's truly a special occasion that we're out for dinner together- and frankly, we're more often grabbing food from a truck at events and
stuff, but yeah- a little more out of the loop than I used to be, so it's interesting to see how eating in the Bay Area has shifted in focus and intensity in just the last five years or so.
Do you think San Franciscans are too focused on food?
Ferris: I think everybody is focused on food because we all die if we don't eat.
However, I feel like I have seen enough photoblogs of peoples' food to last me a life time.
Sometimes I feel like our food culture renaissance is a bit like couture... It is based more on concept and pushing the outrageous and less on consumption. Isn't weird there is a cupcake store downtown that puts cupcakes in its windows to show their outrageous culinary inventions... but no one ever eats them? They all get thrown out?
