Dish

3S Artspace is thrilled to present artist Laura Tanner's magical and colorful drawings in the Gallery. Her site-specific works will be shown alongside other works created for her ongoing project studying culinary practices in different regions of the country.

There are plenty of opportunities to activate the exhibition and engage with the community to help inform her Seacoast-focused works:

June 7 / Opening Reception / Meet The Artist: the artist will give a brief talk about her work at 7pm

July 24 / Read it and Eat! + Dish Summer Dinner Party: Portsmouth Historical Society + 3S Artspace invite the community to a potluck dinner at Portsmouth Historical Society from 6 - 7:30pm, followed by dessert + drinks in the Gallery at 3S from 8 - 9pm.

“Who prepares the food and who sits at the table?”

Dish uses drawing and community engagement to explore how local foodways can define a community's identity and reflect contemporary challenges that community is facing, like food insecurity and climate change. Laura Tanner gathers oral histories from farmers, chefs, restaurant patrons and home cooks. Using their stories as inspiration, her drawings present a visual archive of the rituals, recipes, and traditions of different communities. Tanner's project began in the Southeast, and continues in a new iteration along the East Coast. By examining a community’s foodways, we can better understand a group of people, and in turn, their current economies, social structures, political leanings, and needs as a community.

Spanning drawing, installation and social practice, Laura Tanner’s creative works act as sites of inquiry into the revisionist histories that reinforce systems of inequity. Since receiving her MFA from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Tanner has exhibited nationally, including exhibitions at the Springfield Art Museum, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, and the Susquehanna Art Museum. Her work can be viewed at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans or in the collection of the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Studio Practice in the Department of Visual Art and Art History at Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton, FL.