share plates | Michael Lachman and Lyndsay Pomerantz | June 2021
In the last year the need to find alternative ways to connect to one's community has become increasingly vital. For Lyndsay Pomerantz and Michael Lachman, food—be it through sharing recipes, images or meals—has served as a way to gather, and relate to one another. Building on an ongoing interest in social and aesthetic aspects of food, Michael and Lyndsay have created a menu to guide us through an intimate, yet collective experience.
Bringing together an assembly of recipes, images and links, the menu becomes a resource, connecting us through food in a moment where our social relationships to eating and gathering continue to shift.
Lyndsay Pomerantz (she/her) is a settler living on stolen ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, aka Vancouver.
She is an artist, curator, writer and home cook. Her zodiac sign is Gemini. Her fluctuating moods dictate her level of commitment to the art world although she is a professional arts administrator, so she’s technically a full-time employee. Her digital images are collaged from a myriad of sources—her own photographs, scans from vintage books, screenshots from movies and found images online. Preparation of food and food culture have always been important to her and more recently she has begun to consider cooking and baking a part of her practice.
Michael Lachman (he/him) is an artist living on unceded Indigenous land of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
He has applied to MFA programs several times and was not accepted so he “quit art,” but no one is buying that. His sculptures tell elaborate stories with literary and historical references. He is currently studying computer graphics with the intention of creating environments for video games. This takes up most of his time, but he spends his days off rock climbing and hugging his cat Mr. Softee.
share plates is supported by the Responsive Small Neighbourhood Grants initiative
SPAM (Special Presentation Art Mail) is an email-based art series where artists work collaboratively to create a digital artwork. Through the link below, viewers can sign up to partake in the project by volunteering to receive upcoming interactive Number 3 Gallery emails.
For the most part, the only art we encounter these days arrives via digital means. You may receive emails announcing exhibitions—both online and in person (often by appointment)—and documentation of process work on your feed in lieu of studio visits or art crawls. When we consider how this changes our perception and relationship to artworks we might also reflect on how many folks have been exclusively viewing artwork this way long before our current infectious disease concerns. This said, online art can just as easily connect us as it can be ignored entirely. If we start to question whether the work we see is losing something to these platforms we might also note how art and technology are almost irreducibly connected—be it the tools we use of the visual influence it can catalyze.
This is not a new dynamic; mail artists have long used postal technology as a way to share snippets of their progress or work, which often intentionally took the place of formal in-person exhibitions. Not unlike our current email subscriptions, mail art (an inherently collaborative medium) would enclose participatory or interactive project and publication opportunities. Given that technology is presently the lifeline to connectivity for many of us, what better time to reconnect with the spirit of the early mail and e-mail artists who used their choice method of distribution as a transfer of aesthetic information to surmount geographical and cultural boundaries.
To view the project please contact number3gallery@gmail.com