p e n c h a n t

There is one scent that has always stirred my senses: the enchanting pungency of artist’s oils and linseed. As a student I’d enter the halls of the Art Center School of Design and feel both comfort and excitement. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that comes with the smell, that creation is at work: the head and the heart and the hand laboring together to produce a vision not yet fully realized but full of possibility. You peer in the door and see the quiet, repetitive dip of the sable or bristle hair brush into the paint, the certain stroke across the stretched linen, the wiping of the brush into the rag. Stepping back, tilting the head, squinting the eyes, stepping forward, dipping the brush—the artist is taking the slow dance of creativity under the revolving sky of the artist’s dream.

Ink has a poignant, serious smell, and ink is absolute. Watercolors have the fragrance of subtle charm, and charming and subtle is their effect. Sketch, charcoal, print papers—these emit the ancient memory of trees, and their fibers absorb the marks laid on them, like expressions of passion etched into bark.

The American artist, Walter Meigs, said, “Experience, even for the painter, is not exclusively visual.”

Of the many allurements of art, one is its bouquet.

You say eXpresso, I say …

On my first excursions to New York long ago, at editor-hosted lunches, I discovered this potent drink in a little cup, with a lemon peel curled on the saucer. After ordering an “expresso”, I’d be gently corrected by the waiter, who would repeat—or so I thought— “espresso?”.

I use a stove-top maker. Low-tech, no electricity. All you need is flame. Even when the power goes out in an ice storm or a hurricane, I can still enjoy it, provided the beans are ground, which is a good reason to have a manual coffee grinder at hand. (Handy when traveling, too.)

If you have a stove-top maker, it’s best to ignore the instructions, which usually say to fill the reservoir with water to a level just under the pressure valve. You won’t get a decent brew doing this—it’s too much water. You should measure the amount, and be sure to use cold water. For a 3-cup maker, the correct amount would be 6 ounces, since an espresso cup is not equivalent to a standard 8-oz cup, but closer to a 2 oz amount. I add a little more than 6 oz, because the suction pipe does not reach the very bottom of the reservoir. Fill the basket to the top with finely ground coffee, tamp (another no-no according to the instructions), and set the unit over medium-low heat. To reduce the taste of bitterness and create a thicker brew, I lower the heat as the coffee begins to stream from the upper pipe. I have read that you can never get crema from these makers, but sometimes I’ve been able to, though it’s not as dense as machine-produced espresso.

I use organic beans from Indonesia, which are full-bodied and mellow. Timor is my choice when it’s available, but political unrest and the tsunami of a few years ago affected family-owned businesses, and I haven’t been able to find it. I now use beans from Papua New Guinea. Though the beans from these small plantations may not be “certified” organic, the use of expensive chemicals is rare, and farmers depend on surrounding foliage that lures pests away from the crops. Non-organic coffee has upwards of 90 toxic chemicals, so I advise using beans from the small farm sources; this also supports fair trade. I also recommend getting a stainless steel unit rather than run the risk of aluminum toxicity.

Art is stir-stick & coffee (as in pen & ink) on paper

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Once a year about this time a pink cloud grows and grows and hovers above our front yard.
It affects the light that comes in the windows, the feel of the air. It’s telling the creatures, of course, who love the scent and the sweet, “Come propagate me.” They do, lustily. Then the winds come and we have pink rain. After that, by summer, we have cherries. Then come the birds and squirrels.

And so it goes, year after year.

photo © 2009 by Troy Howell