By Amy Zurcher
All Rights Reserved. © 2012 by Linda Warner Constantino
I have always loved radishes and their earthy, peppery flavor. So cool, so crisp and so refreshing in a ginormous spring salad (the only kind I like). Really, I have a weakness for any root vegetable but this week I am putting the focus on the so often overlooked radish. I am sure the future will allow for more talk of my other favorite and rooterrific veggies.
Honestly, my keen interest in learning more about artist Linda Warner Constantino is what led me to focusing on the radish. I am already scheming a trip to visit her and delve more into the Who, What and Why of her art and life as an artist. What I do know is that Linda is currently a professor in the illustration department at SCAD (The Savannah College of Art and Design) where she teaches a class called “Illustrating the Edible.” Yes, this alone piques my interest. The class teaches students about how to illustrate food and create food-related imagery for food related markets (yum!), like cookbooks, menus, chefware, tabletop and kitchen. Believe me, I have researched this lady and she has done many, many a painting of fruits, vegetables, landscapes…you name it. All things delicious and wonderful!
Of course, by now, you have gleaned she is the artist of the divine radish painting seen above.
In 2009, Linda was one of SCAD’s Presidential Fellowship recipients, which allowed her to create the painting, “The Italian Culinary Experience from Garden to Table.” The fellowship gave her both the time and funding to spend a month painting in Italy, two weeks of which she stayed on an organic farm in Tuscany. That sounds so glorious, doesn’t it? Nowadays, she travels to Italy each year to teach plein air painting workshops on a working organic farm and green hotel! My eyes grew positively wide with delight at the prospect of living or staying in Italy! I was smitten…downright enchanted by her further elaboration that while we spoke, she sat in her garden surrounded by vegetables, amongst flowers she grows in multitudes. Divine sighing ensued.
Her biggest question to me at first was “Why the focus on radishes, Amy?” I explained that I was working with a theme! a muse! the inspiration for this week at Salted & Styled: the globular, crunchy red radish!(Which, if you’re local, might be familiar to you since it just happens to be the inspiration for the Hilton Head Farmers Market logo.) And I assured her I found her paintings of figs and oranges (and, oh, so many others!) ravishing to the tastebuds, as well. My declarations of salivation seemed to satisfy her so she went on to divulge her inspiration.
Roots. Family.
Linda’s two sisters are both avid gardeners and her 89 year old mother is working in her own garden each and every day. Wow, right? And just when I thought Linda could say no more to impress me, she let me in on a pretty big secret—her cousin is (get ready for this…maybe add a drum roll….) Alice Waters of the famed Chez Panisse restaurant, author of many a wonderful cookbook and a legend to any foodie. I was honored she shared this mostly unknown detail (Shhhh…to be shared among the closest of friends, loyal readers). I couldn’t stop myself from thinking again about a project Alice Waters did with a middle school called the “Edible Schoolyard.” (You can read more about that by clicking the link.) I was truly engrossed by her family lineage of organic-minded, like souls who have a deep love of art, food and botanicals.
Linda expressed her excitement over a recent endeavor she and her sister Dona Warner have embarked on, which combines their love of art, the garden and culinary pursuits—called Linadona Botanica™, an art licensing business. What a great partnership and name. I love the merging of names with the addition of “botanica!” So clever. Linda creates watercolor botanicals for the business that are suited to art licensing for kitchen, stationery and home decor markets. Many are fruits and vegetables. They will be presenting their new collections at Surtex in NYC in May 2012! Pretty perfect-looking illustrations, if you ask me, but don’t rely on my word for it, she has also become a certified botanical illustrator through the Society of Botanical Artists Distance Learning Program, add to that her artistry and professorship at SCAD and how could I not find that way, way impressive!
