#spatulas #kitchenutencils

Here’s a typical scene that greets me in the kitchen when I come down for breakfast.

You see, Jay and I have a deal. I load the dishwater at night and he unloads it in the morning. For many years, Jay has meticulously arranged the still wet utensils on paper towels to air dry, altering their positions (handle down, handle up) so they collectively take up the least amount of space on the counter (thereby using less paper towel). I think he picked this habit up during his early years working at Al Baker’s Restaurant in St. Louis and at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, where he earned his undergraduate degree. Certainly, my haphazard way of laying out utensils hasn’t rubbed off on him. Sometime he feels that I don’t appreciate how he clean and organized he keeps the kitchen.

I decided it was time to honor one of Jay’s temporary spatula installations in the above drawing of Jay’s Spatulas, based on the photo below from November, 2014.

As Day 12 approached, I wasn’t sure whether to do a pencil drawing or painting. If I went with the pencil drawing, would I go with graphite alone or add in touches of  color, using my recently rediscovered pack of Prismacolor pencils hiding in the basement? I wasn’t sure how I felt about this as a painting, so I went with the drawing and decided to leave the colored pencils for another time.

As I started drawing, I soon found out that less was more. For whatever reason, I was drawn to the linear quality of the outlines, and started liking the drawing less when I used more shading. So I put my gum eraser to good use and took out much of the chiaroscuro representing the black color of the utensils. Along the way, I was tempted again to add touches of yellow and purple, but decided to save that for another time.

For the past few years, I have been photographing these morning compositions. Jay now says he keeps doing them because I like them (and admittedly I miss them when he is away playing bridge.) But I would prefer to think he executes these carefully thought out arrangements as a creative outlet. Certainly, Jay seems to be more conscious of his designs since I starting recording them, and has even upped his game over time by playing with more colors, different shaped kitchen tools and gadgets, and by including fruits and vegetables.

Previously, I have talked about creative family members – Bonnie, another food artist in the family, and Mom, the sports artist. While I could also refer to Jay as a food and sports artist, I would rather add Jay to this illustrious list as the more distinctive, unique Spatula Artist, a title that he alone absolutely owns.

Remember that you heard it here first: Jay Sloofman, Spatula Artist. Perhaps I should go out and make him business cards…

Maybe I’ll make some sort of photo book of his best creations, or maybe make it available as a free download. And I will dedicate it to all the under-appreciated husbands in America. So, do you think this has the potential to make the New York Times best seller list?

That’s a long way off for now. And Day 13 is fast approaching – way too fast. There aren’t enough hours in the day.