Author: postcardsfromsanantonio

Postcard from Paris, France: Chefs blur borders

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Illustration of a chef's hands arranging a plate with colorful vegetables and a small dish, featured on a French stamp labeled 'Gastronomie'.

Above: Mushroom tarte at Pristine

People who do not accept the new, grow old very quickly.”

A Guide to Modern Cookery, Auguste Escoffier, 1907

We’re already old. We arrived at this stage in but the blink of an eye and certainly have no desire to accelerate the aging process. This is the excuse I offer for not sticking to French food in France.

My hero chefs are those unafraid to pluck ingredients and fuse ideas from many cultures. The evolutionary development of European cuisine as a whole has been speeding along ever since those first traders sailed eastward to discover an explosion of spices and westward to find revolutionary crops – such as tomatoes and cacao.

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Protecting the identity of the pothole patcher

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A stamp featuring an abstract painting by Marsden Hartley, displaying vibrant colors and geometric shapes, labeled "Marsden Hartley | forever | usa".

Above: Street artist Ememem repairing a pothole in a sidewalk on Rainey Street in Austin

I’m just a sidewalk poet…. My work is the story of the city, where cobblestones have been displaced.”

Street artist Ememem, interviewed by Arnesia Young for My Modern Met

Sometimes I feel like a stalker on the trail of tile mosaics of the sidewalk poet of Lyon, France. (See the photos from 18 months ago at the bottom of this post.) So meeting Ememem in person at work Sunday afternoon in Austin left me gobsmacked.

Colorful mosaic artwork reading 'Here Lies a Pothole,' installed in a sidewalk as a creative repair by the street artist Ememem.

Above: “Here Lies a Pothole,” Ememem, Rainey Street, Austin, 2025

The street doctor tries to maintain his anonymity, stealthily installing his mosaics in the dead of night. I imagine that’s due to the fact that often his sidewalk improvement projects are unauthorized.

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Postcard from Guimaraes, Portugal: Bridging cultural divides through art

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A vintage postage stamp from the 1934 Colonial Exhibition in Portugal, depicting a portrait of a woman with a headscarf and traditional attire.

Above: Beaded Bamileke warrior, Cameroon, Central Africa, on exhibit in Jose de Guimaraes International Arts Center.

Linked by invisible threads, the objects seem to talk to each other independently of our presence. An African fetish points to a pre-Columbian vase; a skull imagined by Jose de Guimaraes contrast with a bronze object from ancient China; statuettes speak with paintings without time separating them. As the objects gaze at each other…, it becomes evident that the associated narratives are infinite. The objects ask: ‘How should we live together?'”

Curator notes, Jose de Guimaraes International Arts Center

A carefully curated combination of works by and collected from around the world by artist Jose de Guimaraes (1939-) – 1,128 objects by his count – occupy the sprawling galleries of the first floor of the Jose de Guimaraes International Arts Center.

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