It's been just about two weeks since the first of the three Field + Foundry dinnersLaicie Heeley and I are hosting with Bing. Even as I write this now I remain at a loss for words to express fully my gratitude for all of those who joined and to properly qualify the boundless inspiration and motivation I gathered from the evening. While we come from different backgrounds (personally, professionally, and creatively), we all share this underlying (and driving) desire to create. When you bring that together it's intoxicating and, at least for me, a bit soul-stirring. As promised, I wanted to share a few more glimpses of this magical evening, all captured by the exceptionally talented (and equally lovely) Reema Desai. (Tip: follow Reema on Instagram; you can thank me later.)
To start, though, here are some of wonderful recaps and posts about the evening. (Last week I posted a few quick photos I snapped, but all of these folks (and Reema's beautiful images) give true justice to the evening's magic.)
- Laicie shares all of the beautiful details of the evening here. Laicie and her husband Mark are a culinary power couple. At the dinner Mark lead a workshop on making sourdough starters. For a taste of the appetizer course, read Laicie's post on how to make some of the delicious pickled goods they whipped up.
- Carlene, Morgan, Syndey, Christine and Reema all share beautiful words and images.
- On Instagram, take a peek here and here.
Gratitude. I have so much of it -- not only those who joined, but to Bing for their support of creatives, makers, and doers; to West Elm for providing us with the beautiful goods on which to share these meals; to Artifact Uprising for helping us record the memories and stories from these evenings; and to Amanda Marko for the words and experiences she shared about building Trouve Magazine.
Allow me to digress here. Leading up to and particularly in the time since this dinner, the definition of creative, of being "a creative," has been rolling around in my mind. Online searches yield a slew of definitions, variations around the same concept. Perhaps the most salient bit of information the interwebs offers is this: there are more than 60 definitions of the term. Creativity, regardless of how you define it, is characteristically vague, complex, and amorphous. For the nerds like myself, here's an quick journal piece that attempts to explain why this is so. The academic, unsurprisingly, arrives at the same point I believe most of us do -- creativity (and I'll add my own bit here -- being a creative) is broad and flexible in its application. This I feel is its greatest quality.
We all arrived at this dinner from different places (in both the literal and figurative sense), with different passions and ways that we go about manifesting them, but we were all were drawn by the same (wide reaching) thread -- creativity. This is all to say, I am thankful for the malleability of this term for without it I might have the the reason to meet, engage, and *create* with so many incredible people. It is ambiguity, at least in this case, for which I am also so, so deeply grateful.
All photos by Reema Desai.