Down on the Farm
Rob Forbes | 03-06-2018
Calabrian chili peppers- Seoul nail polish// Sonoma Carrots- Taipei broom/ /Various marigolds- Austin incense
At last: the long overdue Studio Forbes update is upon us (not that anyone has been asking). It’s been a curious and transitional six months for me, but now I hope to get back to some writing.
PUBLIC Bikes Update: We Like Mikes
PUBLIC Bikes was acquired by San Francisco’s Mike’s Bikes. Ken Martin manages Mike’s, and he has built one of the most impressive bike organizations in the US – twelve stores, a thriving online business, and a philanthropic arm. So please send your friends (and yourself) to Mike’s to buy a PUBLIC bike, get a tune-up, or for anything else bike-related. Check out their story in the video here and you’ll see why we feel honored to have Mikes lead PUBLIC into the future.
Mexico City Milagros- Jimmy Nardello peppers // Various cucumbers and gherkin- Luis Barragan interior
Studio Forbes Update: Farming and Design. Say what?
Over this past sixteen months I have been developing a micro-farm in Healdsburg CA, along the Russian River. Gardening and landscape design have been longtime passions of mine, and I feel that what’s going on in the food world is one of the most exciting innovative design and cultural developments in the modern world. While most modern design disciplines – architecture, graphics, industrial design, furniture – were at their zenith during the 1940’s -1970’s, this same period was the nadir of the food movement, if there even was a ‘food movement’. “Modern” food was frozen, fast, convenient, less and less nutritious – the antithesis of local and sustainable.
These convenience trends have continued, e.g. Fast Food is more prevalent than ever. But the organic and sustainable Slo Food movement has been growing at a faster pace, albeit serving a smaller market. There is more dynamic change going on in the food industry today than in any other industry, except (surprise) technology.
Our farm is one tiny part of the amazing farm to table movement that has swept into our modern culture and so common as to almost be trite here in the Bay Area. It is an international movement with roots in Europe and spirited in the US with food icons like Alice Waters at Chez Panisse and many others here in the Bay Area. California has been a leader, home of schools for farmers like Green String here in Sonoma where Miriam Blachman who manages our farm cut her teeth.
See for Yourself Update (Lend me your Ears and Eyes):
My book is about finding beauty in manmade stuff on the streets, stalking patterns, repetition, symmetry, and other forms of ‘found’ beauty. That’s the gist of the book, but my sense of beauty, and yours, derives from the natural world. Why for example do we find pattern and repetition so pleasing? Perhaps because they are ordering principals we see in nature – blades of grass, schools of fish, ears of corn – or perhaps they are just convenient categories our minds need to sort through the tumult of visual cacophony we see everyday all around us? Do we find beauty in symmetry because we humans are, ourselves, bilaterally symmetrical? Most of us find the color orange especially stimulating, with it’s echoing of fall foliage, carrots, persimmons, and sunsets. Is this because orange represents change in nature?
Panama oil cans- sun gold and lucky tiger cherry tomatoes
It’s a big complicated topic. Here are some simple images from our farm produce paired with some urban pics taken over the years, just to emphasize these visual connections.