In a tiny village in the heart of France, there once lived an American girl who would make her daily trip to one of the two village bakeries to buy her bread. She would walk in, give the necessary greetings, and choose which loaf of bread she would buy. The woman behind the counter would take the loaf of bread and place it on a thick stack of thin, fragile, tracing-paper-like sheets and in one agile movement would wrap one piece around the chosen loaf. She would quickly scotch tape the overlapping corner of the paper, or simply twist its two excess corners by spinning the bread around in front of her until the paper was attached to satisfaction. The counterperson would then ring up her purchase, the American girl would pay, they would give the necessary greetings, and she would make her way home. The American girl was a painter, a Francophile and a lover of French culture, as well as a longtime resident of France, not to mention that she was married to a Frenchman known throughout the land as an avid and fervent eater of bread.

But so as not to stray from our tale, for many years previous, it is true, she had noticed the beauty of these papers, their delicateness, the aesthetics of their motifs, yet her life had been a city life and one of more irregularity. Here in the small French village, life for the American girl was isolated and less social. The need to go out and purchase one’s bread served as a break in one’s day, an outing, and who – having grown accustomed to it - could go without this fresh, sometimes warm, baguette on one’s table? The daily two minute stroll from the outskirts of East N.A. into the heart of downtown provided several deep breaths of fresh air, a chance to see animals grazing in the neighboring fields, and to sometimes hear the incongruous pop music blaring through speakers perched high on the lampposts of the deserted village streets. The American girl was a painter by profession and passion, who was at a temporary lack for studio space and as the days went by, each day upon coming home from her daily errands, she would undo the paper wrapped around her bread purchase and unthinkingly discard it, before settling in to tackle her daily chores. After weeks of this inspiring banality, and a firstborn son beginning to sleep his full nights, the American girl, still a painter who was still at a lack for studio space, began to feel the desire to paint more and more strongly till it became quite unbearable. One day, while undoing the paper from around her baguette, she stopped. She hesitated, feeling the lightness and feel of the paper in her fingers. For a moment or two or longer, she stared into the beauty and quirkiness of its printed words and patterns. She said to herself, “What if I did a drawing on this paper? Or even a collage? This could be done at night in my living room; all I would need is some black drawing ink and a few brushes. It is true that I already feel inspired by its look and feel. I can see transforming these designs and patterns in so many ways.” And so that evening, the girl put her son and her tired husband to bed, and while all the village was quiet and dark, she sat down in her living room, and with black ink and water, a few scraps of white paper and glue, she began to paint on her “bread paper.”

And so, the next day and every day that followed, the American girl’s daily excursion took on somewhat of a different meaning, shall we say, a bit more interesting and a bit more artistic. Each day, depending on how much and which kind of bread she bought, she would bring home a new addition to her pile of surfaces. Now upon arriving, she ever so carefully unscotched and unwrapped the "bread paper", smoothed it out, and laid it down in a safe place, retrieving it later — when her house and her village were dark and quiet — to paint on. Within just a few evenings, painting on these surfaces spurred much thought which seemed to spiral and interchange. Used in bakeries everywhere in France, so common and seemingly unimportant to all, these papers represented for our American artist – a land of creative immensity. Their aesthetics had always touched and recently inspired, but what ensued was a burgeoning underlying concept which, for her, was a cyclical representation of the plight of the artist itself. This surface, the vestige of her daily act, used to be created on, in turn to be marketed, to then be sold, in order to subsist, in order to consume once more. She thought, "But of course, is not the work of art every artist’s ‘daily bread’?; my work in this case just happens to be taken directly from mine, therefore: evident" (the obvious in life brought out through art has always been interesting and amusing to our artist). Very early on, she would coin the series (each individual piece as well as its entirety) her “Daily Bread.”

In those beginning weeks and months of working, she was to discover quite a bit of sustenance in and around the developing visual and conceptual framework of the series. At night while painting in the big, sunken-in armchair by the heat of the wood stove, her mind delved into the ocean of possible subject matter, this rushed in in waves — from the cultural, social, religious, and historical aspects of bread to the simple expressions of one’s daily existence to the connotations known by all. Technically as well, there was a world to discover, in this, her first in-depth, serial journey into the drawing medium. The constraints posed by the medium at hand, paradoxically, as is often the case, opened up a world of possibilities. In keeping with her painterly nature, she would work on tens upon tens of works at a time leading up to the hundreds in progress today. Who knew how long the painting voyage would last? Surely not our artist, to whom the duration of time spent from start to finish on any given piece was ever a matter of great importance. Her firm belief lie in seeing out the painting voyage to its final destination, wherever that may be. This meant that the trip could last ten minutes, ten hours, ten weeks, ten months, or more; and when “finish” did come — happening sometimes by surprise, discovery, or mere acceptance — and even if doubt still existed, “finish” was, nearly always, certain.
Indeed, the immediacy and freshness of the materials produced more than a handful of quickly finished pieces, but it was on those longer journeys that our artist sought and ultimately found ways to work into this surface again and again. This in itself held a challenge — adding onto and reworking into the successive layers on so fragile and delicate a surface with respect to the inherent qualities of this reputedly unforgiving medium. White gouache used in conjunction with the black ink allowed for a necessary opaqueness while creating a transparency through which previous layers traversed and lingered. Single colors of gouache introduced into the predominantly black and white palette served mostly to incorporate images transforming the motifs of the paper. Cheap water-based markers, drawn with then diluted, left to bleed and fade, provided a regal way of bringing color and transparency to the series.

Even if one took care, a hasty purchase or crowded transport could easily cause rips and tears in the vulnerable surface. What began as collaging small pieces of white paper to keep the surface intact or to cover or “erase” parts in progress, developed markedly from its first instances when our artist began to use what she likes to call her “specific elements” of collage. Take a moment to ponder, as she did, the events and interactions throughout one’s average day, and what one is given and accumulates in consequence. The many little pieces of paper of all sorts she was apt to receive were like testimonies of consumption, amusement, or other. They were the physical traces, the banal witnesses, of the events of her day as they took place — recording, listing, and showing what she had done, ate, seen, or bought. These elements symbolized and illustrated her daily existence and were pulled right from it. It dawned on her quite naturally to begin collecting and appropriating them for collage use in her “Daily Bread.” Receipts of all sorts, used tickets, packaging, wrappers — all provided choice materials, and all could inspire: used Parisian metro tickets introduced a beautiful aqua green; the gold Darjeeling tea bag wrapper, a favorite nighttime brew before she settled in to paint, spurred the use of gold gouache in conjunction with the white and the black ink. Much to her delight, this component of the series would not remain in the realm of the simply aesthetic or technical, but would serve the heart of the main concept the painter was building on. As more and more “Daily Breads” were completed, she would grow to look back on their presence in the individual works as another might look at photos or memorabilia pasted in a scrapbook or journal. On more than one occasion, she wondered how these generic items could stir up so much memory and meaning. How could a grocery receipt from a year ago recall an entire day spent?

Several years have passed since that day when the American girl first hesitated while undoing the paper from around her daily bread purchase. Despite time, a move away, another child born, and other simultaneous serial painting journeys in other mediums begun and carried on, her “Daily Bread” continues fruitfully. For our artist (and had she a choice she would not have it otherwise), no phrase nor statement can translate what is told in the over 150 works completed or the 200 works in progress today. They are to be “read” visually, over time —
a minute, an hour, a year, ten years. Many hang in the homes of others – proof that this “Daily Bread” is indeed truly one. What our American artist has simply tried to do here before you is to tell you its beginning and its story. She invites you to do the rest.

Lisa Salamandra
May 2005