DINNER WITH PETE

INSTALLATION—2023

DATE: MAY 2023
SPECS:
[TABLECLOTH]
     40 in x 40 in
     100 cocktail napkins
     cotton, ink, embroidery thread
     typewritten tapestry

[MENU]
6 in x 8.5 in
16 pages
colorplan, natural, 135 gsm
saddlestitch binding
RESEARCH ASSISTANCE:
Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon
   Presidential Libraries

Dear Pete,

Thank you so much for joining me for dinner this evening. A chance to share a meal with you is something I have desired since I first heard stories of you and your magnificent cooking abilities. I am largely ignorant of your life … your passions, your secrets, your emotions have become lost with your absence … yet some sort of powerful connection has drawn me to you as the source of who I am today.

For tonight’s dinner, I have prepared for you a selection of stories. These stories are written from your perspective through my own voice and chronicle how I imagine your time at the White House Kitchen may have gone. From speculations of kitchen camaraderie to quality family time, I offer you a hundred course experience in which I hope we can connect. The State Dinners that you prepared were facilitators of connection; your food laid the backdrop for important conversations, yet I find it troubling that you were not privy to those interactions. Maybe it didn’t bother you - I have heard you are a very easy-going man - but, nevertheless, I would like to give you the chance to revel in the power of the dinner party with me.

I hope you don’t mind, but I have collected the one hundred State Dinners you helped to prepare and offered my own opinions of the dishes, emphasizing those that I would have loved to try. I have a feeling these might be some of your favorite components too. Much in vein of your go-getter attitude, I tried my hand at some new skills to sew this collage that chronicles your work and informs my passion. I hope you enjoy it as the arrangement for this highly anticipated meal.

With all that being said, I just want to let you know that this is an honor. I have admired you as this sort of transient explanation of my existence since I saw the first picture of you smiling ear to ear next to one of your cakes. I am beyond delighted to finally share a meal with you.

Enjoy!
Love always,
Lily