On Thursday, April 17, 2014, Parsons Tishman Auditorium hosted AIGA/NY Nicholas Blechman: Food Chains. Matteo Bologna of Mucca Design introduced Nicholas Blechman as an illustrator, designer, and Art Director of the New York Times Book Review. “He doesn’t even teach in a university, and he took a sabbatical!” said Bologna. “He’s a lucky man. He went to Italy.” The results of Blechman’s six months in Rome was the highlight of his presentation.

Blechman was as a winner of the Rome Prize, a fellowship awarded by the American Academy of Art in Rome, “the Rome prize means you get five things…room, board, excellent food, a stipend, a studio, and freedom — freedom from all the chores that make up daily life,” Blechman explained.

Blechman’s wife and five-year-old son traveled to Rome with him, and all three treasured being somewhere different, away from their repetitive life in New York City. Instead of a quick sandwich at his desk, Blechman lunched at a long table in the American Academy’s arched courtyard. Blechman’s cluttered office was replaced by a huge studio space. And in contrast to New York’s hum of modernity and constant change, the city of Rome was infused with its connection to antiquity. “It felt like we were in a time machine going in only one direction — into the past,” said Blechman. “There’s always a story, and there’s always a past, to everything in Rome.”

Blechman’s primary project during the fellowship was to research and visualize food chains. “The food chain has become extremely complicated, because every time we eat something it sets off another chain of events. I wanted to somehow map this out,” he said.

His first endeavor was a study of how olive oil is made. He made his own olive oil straight from the olives growing on trees at the American Academy. Blechman described the process of harvesting olives from the trees and transporting them to a small, family-own mill to be cleaned, crushed, and separated into oil, water and pits. The pits were burned in the furnace to heat the building, and the excess water was used to water the trees outside. “It’s a completely self-sustaining,” said Blechman. “They don’t do it because they want to be tagged as ‘green’ — it’s just a more efficient way of working.”

Next, he studied industrial-scale olive oil making, a process rife with imported olives, and questionable oil blends. He turned these findings into a New York Times op-art piece, Food Chains: Extra Virgin Suicide.

Next, Blechman shared Food Chains: Planet Pasta about the Barilla, the world’s largest pasta factory, and illustrations of his research into Parmesan cheese production in Parma.

Lastly, Blechman showed off his two children’s books: Night Light is a guessing game, a counting tool, and a set of graphic illustrations of vehicles, and Animal Kingdom, a compendium of illustrated facts about animals. Following the talk, attendees who had pre-ordered copies of Animal Kingdom had the opportunity to have their books signed by the author.

When asked whether he planned to turn his ‘Food Chain’ work into a book, Blechman answered, “I have no idea!. That would be awfully nice, but right now I’m just focused on creating as many of these as possible, and on doing more research. That was the fun thing about working on this project in Rome: I had no idea how it would be used. It was more about creating a body of work around a certain topic.”

Additional Information:

Nicholas Blechman
The Rome Prize
Food Chains: Extra Virgin Suicide
Food Chains: Planet Pasta
Night Light
Animal Kingdom

Event Details:
AIGA/NY Nicholas Blechman: Food Chains

Event Photos:

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Special thanks to contributing writer Karen Vanderbilt for the AIGA/NY Breakfast Club: All the Tricks in the Book event recap and photos. Karen can be found at karenvanderbilt.com, @k_vanderbilt and Studio Kudos.