If you update your schedule religiously on your iCal and BlackBerry, you probably see little need to pick up a new calendar for 2008. Still, any art and food lover should check out this year’s Food Glorious Food III calendar, produced by the Zenith Gallery in DC’s Penn Quarter to benefit the Capital Area Food Bank.
The $15 calendar is the old-school kind—it hangs on the wall and you can scribble (by hand!) events and appointments in the one-inch boxes. It provides changing monthly art for your home or office—and all images are food-centric, from a still life titled “Eggplant, Bread and Artichokes” (March) to a painting of reflections in a window outside Julia’s Empanadas in DC (June).
Alongside each month’s artwork is a recipe from a local chef or cookbook author. January offers a print of an oil-on-canvas painting with a hunger-inducing bowl of penne in the foreground as well as a recipe for mushroom baklava from Restaurant K’s Alison Swope. All proceeds from the calendar’s sales go to the food bank.
“I like putting together different communities of people for good causes,” says Margery Goldberg, Zenith’s owner. “It’s great synergy—the chefs and the artists and the food bank and the people in the business community who help sponsor.” Three years ago, she was introduced to Lynn Brantley, who runs the Capital Area Food Bank, and they got to talking about food and art. That conversation sparked an idea for an exhibit on food in art; images from the show are featured in the calendar each year.
The “Food Glorious Food III” exhibit is currently on view at Zenith, and all artwork is for sale—10 percent of sales also go to the food bank. “Fruitscape,” the calendar’s cover image of a colorful buffet of fruits, is a 23-by-48 inch oil-on-linen painting that sells for $12,000. Ten percent of that means a sizable donation to a great cause.
Calendars are $15 at Zenith Gallery (413 Seventh St., NW; 202-783-2963; zenithgallery.com), Politics and Prose (5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW; 202-364-1919; politics-prose.com), Bridge Street Books (2814 Pennsylvania Ave., NW; 202-965-5200; bridgestreetbooks.com), Periwinkle (3815 Livingston St., NW; 202-364-3076; periwinkledc.com), and both locations of the Capital Area Food Bank (645 Taylor St., NE, 202-526-5344; 6833 Hill Park Rd., Lorton, 703-541-3063; capitalareafoodbank.org).
