The Smell of Burnt Butter & Printers' Ink, Gordo, Alabama

I finally got to Gordo, Gordo Alabama that is, where Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. (APKJ), and his Kennedy Prints Studio is located. I have known APKJ since he studied at UW-Madison for his MFA in the mid nineties. I have a snake shaped necklace that I 'liberated' from my husband that he made, a hand-made book with printed proverbs about women and strength, that I wear to this day. APKJ was born and grew up in Louisiana but now lives in Gordo AL. For a hilarious look at a sliver of APKJ's life, I highly recommend the documentary 'Proceed and Be Bold'. I journeyed to Gordo AL when I was already on a tour in the South to attend the Southern Foodways Symposium 2010, and colleagues in Memphis, TN, Hillsborough, and Chapel Hill, NC.
     APKJ kindly agreed to allow TCF to use his studio to create Poster Editions as a premium for fund-raising. I arrived on a Tuesday afternoon at 3pm and was on the Vandercook Printing Press by 4pm. By 7pm, I had created about 200 posters with the  first backgrounds, and then was served Amos' homemade chili-garlic-tomato sauce laden over pasta for dinner. From early morning to late night, and in between over 2500 turns of the Vandercook crank, Amos made coffee from one of his 53 Italian-designed espresso makers (that is how many I counted on the wall!) each morning. Daily, we savored home baked croissants and breads with his cultured yogurt and preserved pear jams. One day he made another batch of croissants, some pecan-loaded cinnamon sticky buns, and special chocolate chip cookies with a touch of my Memphis salted pecans mixed in. At one point melted butter spilled into the oven, and smoked the apartment and the entire print shop with the acrid sharp burnt butter fumes that mingled with the chemical printer's ink...

We seamlessly cooked or printed. There was not a difference between the two endeavors. I traveled from the Vandercook to the kitchen, and cooked lunches and dinners of fresh vegetables in a coconut red Thai sauce one evening, and a vegetarian tagine with simple ras al-hanout on another. All the butter drenched carbohydrates served me well as I cranked out over 600 posters! Five different poster editions. Here is a glimpse at the first two editions.Each edition has 90 versions.