A Conversation with Eboni Bugg
Eboni Bugg (she/her) is an emerging writer and culinary artist based in Charlottesville. Her work focuses on the relationship between people and their natural, social, and built environments. During her Spring 2024 New City Arts Fellowship, Eboni created a food zine and installation that features poetry, essay, collage, and recipes using heirloom crops that traveled from the African continent and across the diaspora. The work she made will be on view at Welcome Gallery as part of fallow, a group exhibition featuring work by this year’s Fellows.
Eboni Bugg was interviewed by Kitty Smith (Summer 2024 New City Arts Intern). The photos in this interview are by Lindsey Leahy.
When you read the fellowship prompt, what called you to it?
I see various calls for fellowship, programs, and residencies that I've never responded to. But it was the notion of the theme that drew me more so than anything, and it felt like a very organic and visceral response to it. Immediately, when I saw fallow as the theme and all the various definitions and connotations of the word, I had a very distinct image of rapture.
I saw a plowed field, furrowed with rows, and no people there. It was this question of, how could you tell if the field was at rest or if it had been abandoned? This notion that a field could be at rest but also could just be empty or left— and how to tell the difference— really just stuck with me. I had gone to Ghana the year before and had been left with a lot of questions about real or imaginary lineage. I went to places of pilgrimage where our collective ancestors marched, without really knowing or even needing to know whether or not they were truly my ancestors or not. I've always been fascinated with and also grieved not being able to know. There's something about the uncertainty that really appealed to me. I thought art might render some insight otherwise hidden within myself. I’m a newbie gardener and that has been a way that I've experienced a kind of ancestral knowledge. So it was definitely the theme that drew me—I just wanted to see what would come through.
I feel like that makes a lot of sense, with food having such a relationship to heritage and movement. What’s the process of having food and gardening as a medium been like?
Yeah, it's been a really interesting back and forth between working on the piece that I'm making to hang and the food. I’ve definitely learned that I have a strong sense of line shape, color, composition when it comes to a food palette. But it's harder to express myself through visual art (or at least it has felt like that).
I think part of that attention to that fallowness has been also about how these drives have lain fallow in myself over time. When I was younger, I participated in this really intensive art program that I really loved, but I don't think, for me, it ever felt like that was an allowable or accessible way of being in the world. And yet, when my daughter displayed artistic talent, it never crossed my mind that it wasn't a viable thing for her to pursue. My own experiences growing up, and as a young single parent, put me in a very practical state. There's an essay by Alice Walker, and she talks about the art of Black women, and how, in the absence of this very abstract “art for art's sake” way of being in the world, they did things like quilting and making art out of meals, or these other sort of domestic things. So this has also been an opportunity for me to examine the ways that I've set my own creativity aside to be a parent and to be of service in the community. There was a sort of reclamation for me in trying this.
I'd love to know if you feel like you've been conceiving of yourself differently since you've started this process, exploring this creative side of yourself that isn't as rooted in practicality.
I think there is a healthy tension. I actually find that I am very much drawn to craft that's elevated to the form of art, and things that have utility. I have a really beautiful straw broom that I brought back from Uganda; I have sweetgrass baskets. I just went to Emma Terry’s clay show, and I love all of the animals, but I bought a plate from that. I have always been drawn to that kind of creative expression, I think because it is situated in this idea that we do what’s available to us.
Absolutely.
Saying that right now feels very brave, as compared to a few months ago, or to all the things that it took for me to attempt to submit my application for this. I have just been shocked that people are even taking this remotely seriously. They're talking to me about it as if it has meaning, and it’s exciting. It’s lovely, because I think this is closer to what I've wanted to do for some time. It's definitely wrought a number of changes in what I consider to be an important and acceptable use of my time, and a little bit of grief about not having spent more time doing this. Right now, I feel like I'm just such a beginner, which is not always a comfortable and fun place to be. And so I just hope there's time for me to keep going and keep exploring.
I think I'm a person of ideas, in general, and different things are going to be explored in different ways. There are things that are much better expressed through food, some better expressed through writing, some might be better expressed in some kind of visual art form— so I'm creating a quilt, and I'm not a quilter, but a quilt felt like the appropriate sort of expression. And for the things that I'm putting in the zine, there are some things that are going to be in poem form, which is really the only way that I can express that idea. And some things will be in a recipe, and that's the only way that I can express that idea.
Thus far, do you feel like you've kind of had an intuitive sense of what language you want to put those ideas into, or is it ever more trial and error?
Yeah, there's definitely an intuitive sense, but it does depend. I've been grappling with these heirloom or heritage crops that have very different histories. Some are very obviously connected to Black culture, but I tried to interrogate who told me this was important versus what feels important to Black culture. I’ve tried to sit with it. Watermelon came up, and there's nothing really that I believe you can do to improve upon nature when it comes to a watermelon. Yeah, you grow it well. You chill it. You eat it. You know? But I kept trying to force a recipe to feel like I was doing something with this thing. Eventually, I was just like, “No, that's silly. Really, it's a poem. It's the memory of growing my first watermelon, standing over the sink with my best friend with juice dripping down our arms and love in our eyes, that's really what that is.”
When I sense that I'm in the right place with that, other things come out. Like, okay, I'm remembering my friend giving me this watermelon plant. Or, it becomes about something different: I think about Palestine and protest. Yeah, there's no recipe, that’s a poem. Getting a sense of what I'm trying to articulate in different ways has been fun. That feels like a kind of growth.
It’s amazing that you’ve taken this step. I feel like it's a bit of throwing yourself in the deep end in the best way—do you feel in the deep end at all?
I do feel like I'm in the deep end, but I feel like I have a supportive community. I think the biggest thing is just that I just wanted people to feel like I was given an equal chance to try this thing out— not banking on Sahara’s success or my work in the community or anything like that. It took a lot to put myself out there in this way. That’s one of the things I love about New City Arts in general; I don't think there was any other place where I could have done this, or tried to do it, be taken seriously, and be given enough support to make it happen.
That is really special. When do you think you started to conceive of cooking as a creative practice?
I think it's still evolving. There’s a part of me that always thinks that in order to call yourself anything, you must go to school, you must have this credential, you must do this, and you must do that. And I've been looking at the difference between a cook and a chef, and it's really interesting what people have to say about that. I think I have very clear and distinct food memories that are anchoring experiences and have shaped so many different things. I first thought about food as a medium through writing poetry or essay. Yet, when I really sit and think, I think food for me has always been about like an expression of love, like a necessary component for community or communion.
When Sahara was born, my relationship to food really came to the fore, first in that I just got very obsessed with what it meant to feed her. I think I first thought about food and sustenance in that way as like a revolutionary act, not a creative act, as a Black woman nursing her at a time where that was taboo in some ways. I made all of her food, and I got very obsessed with, like, if she was trying an apple for the first time, I would wonder what it would taste like to her without her knowing what it was— I just went down all these rabbit holes around food. And then, it just became very much the thing that you had to do in order to live. There was no creativity in it after those very early stages, it was just about getting food on the table. But there were some folks that encouraged me to make things up, and I started to get a little bit more creative with it.
And then, I think what really shifted for me was when I actually joined a CSA share. We always ate healthily, I just started to get lots of vegetables and things that weren’t in my regular rotation— figuring out what I was going to do with a kohlrabi, or okra, or whatever—and started to see that relationship between sustainability, and the earth, and what would it take to bring the best out of this material. Which sounds like art. I imagine somebody getting really enamored with a particular paint or something and asking, “What's the best expression of this thing?” That is what I think began my creative journey, trying to figure out how to build upon what's already beautiful in nature.
When did you start gardening?
I started during the pandemic. I will say, though, the first thing that I ever planted were marigolds. Actually, when you asked me about my first early experience of creativity, that is what came to my mind. The house we lived in had a little yard and we got some book that had some seeds in it. I just remember being super excited about it. The reason I hesitated about that, though, is because I've been reading— this is my way—”What makes an artist, what is an artist, who gets to be an artist?” And it's all about, like, the application of aesthetics and skill and these things. So being a gardener doesn't quite fit there, but I think creativity begins with the act of creation. And I think witnessing something happen from this act is when I really started wondering how any seed can be planted and what can grow from that— what beauty can come from that?
There was just something about watching beauty emerge as a result of some action that was really compelling to me. I had a really challenging upbringing, and I think when I thought about what success in life might look like, it always was to have a home, a place that was mine and steady and stable enough that I could tend to. I bought my house right before the pandemic, and one of the main selling points was that it had like two huge raised garden beds in the front. And so I've just been doing it since then. I think having that sense of sanctuary is what allows me to be brave in this new way.
I work at a French restaurant where there’s so much hierarchy in the labeling of things, so it’s kind of introduced me to these distinctions between cook and chef you’re talking about. I feel like you've been touching on that with not just a chef versus cook, but also in the labeling of art and artists. Is that something that you feel like you're very self aware of?
I think so, in the sense that for any person that's like exploring something for the first time, you're trying to situate yourself in the thing. I think I’m trying to situate myself within the canonhood of Black art or creativity. At some point in time, I will become comfortable calling myself an artist when I'm no longer seeking permission to do so. Whatever series of things that leads to that, I'm looking forward to it. I also do think I'm very sensitive to attribution. Any recipe that I put in a zine really comes from my own inspiration, research, and testing. And most people indicate that the difference between a cook and a chef is that a cook is someone who follows a recipe and does it really well. A chef is generally someone that has leadership and responsibility in the kitchen, but who is also an expert in flavor and expression. I mean, I'm not a trained chef, but I think I'm a little more than a cook as well.
Yeah, it sounds like you experiment a lot.
Yeah. It’s interesting to see the places where I feel confident experimenting and where I don’t. I do think that intuition is important, and experimentation is important, but having a foundational basis and skill is also really critical. I feel like I’m a very good ice cream maker. The first time we made ice cream it was a disaster, and I realized it was all about a lack of patience on my part, a lack of fluidity, and all of that. So now, I can see an ingredient and understand how it works and how I might want to incorporate it. I have been having lots of fun with that.
I love the way that life and art are interweaving in this project. You mentioned you’re making a quilt for this too. My mom is a quilter. I’ve spent so much time thinking about the labor of love and also the physical comfort of it. When you’re talking about your experiences cooking and with your daughter, it sounds like you’re thinking a lot about these relationships to the Earth and people around you.
I think that quilt is definitely all about relationships, that's for sure. I mean, the whole thing is really about my relationship with myself, my relationship to my daughter, or to motherhood, and certainly my relationship to the earth. Also, though, my relationship to this tenuous ancestral lineage that I feel exists— but one that I'm trying to engage in in the most organic and authentic way rather than an academic or put-upon kind of way.
In a way that you feel in your core?
Exactly. I don't want anyone to tell me what soul food is. I want a sense of fulfillment of an ancestral lineage when I cook something and I just know. Okra has been that for me. It was the first plant that I grew. I may do it differently, but I know I'm doing something that was done before because of this unbroken line of people behind me. Really though, I think the real product of this is not the zine, and it’s not the quilt: it’s really me, owning the kind of creativity that’s meaningful to me and feeling like that’s enough.
The 2024 New City Arts Fellowship studio space was located at The Underground: A Center for Creative Collaboration (The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative), an artist-run creative co-working space on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia. A cohort of four artist Fellows received a month-long studio space grant, a $500 stipend, and a stocked pantry with their favorite drinks and snacks. The Fellowship season (March 2024 - July 2024) culminates in fallow, a group exhibition at Welcome Gallery in September.
The 2024 New City Arts Fellowship is made possible with support from anonymous donors, the Anne & Gene Worrell Foundation, the Community Endowment Fund at the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation, Pam Sutton-Wallace and Maurice Wallace, and a partnership with The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative.
