Proposal: Where What You Eat

Courtney Moy

Describe Your Project.
The mission is a simple recipe: 1 printmaker, 1 consuming idea, 1 city (Boston), 13 photos, and 13 shirts. In my search for great food and a great story, I will go around Boston to get to know its neighborhoods and what people like to eat in them. I’ve started to edition my prints using the number 13 based on the idea of a baker’s dozen.

The neighborhoods: Allston/Brighton, Roslindale, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill/Roxbury, Chinatown/Downtown Crossing, the South End, the North End, Mattapan, South Boston, East Boston, and Charlestown.

I will ask participants to email me a photo of their favorite dish, from which I would make a drawing and render it into a screenprint. I would screenprint the image onto a shirt and give it back to the owner. this project is a combination of what I love about the city and my interest in accessibility and multiplicity. I want people to take something with them. I do not seek a profit, all I ask in return is a photo of the owner in their new t-shirt.

How will Feast funding make your project happen?
$300 would be more than enough to help print shirts for this project. I have silkscreens ready to use for printing and access to equipment. Shirts and ink alone would be $100. The other $200 would be split for shipping the shirts back to the owners and then for a small publication printing of a small color zine of this project.

I see this as having two venues down the line; one is traditional—having a show in a gallery or publication—and the other non-traditional. I see the t-shirt and people wearing these shirts outside in public as having its own separate life. eventually, my goal would be to have a larger project in the future: visit more cities, talk to locals and print more shirts.

This is a collaborative project. I’m fascinated by the idea of locality, and traceability to community. In Boston you wear a red Sox shirt and you’re taken for a local. When it comes to taste, people are just as selective about food as they are about how they dress. When it comes to food, I’ve always been interested in value and taste. I love food. I love to eat. I love to talk about what I eat. But most of all I love a good story.What we choose to eat is another way we identify ourselves. My work is more than a mish mash of Chinese and English, it’s become a response to my own broken english, to growing up in Boston, and to everyone for feeding me.