I am the founder and editor of Improvisedlife.com, interiors, productivity, fashion, self-expression... anything that requires a resourceful, problem-solving, design-oriented mindset.
It's theme threads through all my work: how to solve a problem or assignment with unique constraints and no instructions, that needed an answer with heart, style, integrity, meaning.
I was a photographer who morphed into a chef and then into an award-winning food writer, editor and stylist. I contributed to Food&Wine, Saveur, Self and The New York Times among others, and appeared on national TV and radio. Food was a BIG thing but not the whole thing. I also started designing: photography rental spaces, furniture, books you could eat...
My work as a journalist took me into the fields and homes of saffron farmers in Spain, kitchens of Harry’s Bar in Venice where Arrigo Cipriani showed me the REAL way to eat caviar... truffle hunting in France and Italy, and documenting a rare culture in Appalachia ...
|
|
|
Food styling is, at its very heart, improvising solutions nobody trains you to do. I had to figure out how to gold leaf pears for Maria Robledo, and wrangle lives snails to slide along the edge of an oyster for Irving Penn.
|
|
|
I designed photography locations in Greenwich Village, and Chelsea that have been used in style books, magazine stories, videos and ads.
|
|
For over twenty years, I’ve been a contributor to public radio’s The Splendid Table, where I talk about improvising in the kitchen and at table. You can stream my shows here.
In addition to writing award-winning cookbooks, I collaborated on an artist’s book that is in many rare book collections: a prose poem impressed via letterpress in sheets of saffron pasta (instead of paper). You can boil it up and eat the words! Read more about it here.
For over twenty years, I’ve been a contributor to public radio’s The Splendid Table, where I talk about improvising in the kitchen and at table. You can stream my shows here.
In addition to writing award-winning cookbooks, I collaborated on an artist’s book that is in many rare book collections: a prose poem impressed via letterpress in sheets of saffron pasta (instead of paper). You can boil it up and eat the words! Read more about it here.
These days I work in the Harlem space I gutted and reconfigured to be Mission Control for ImprovisedLife.com, consulting projects, and product design. Check out some of the design solutions I came up with here.
