Ruthie's Table 4: Ed Ruscha

Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami's Studios.

I'm sitting here in La with Dexter and ed Arusha. Edvarusche is the artist and Dexter is the dog, and I hope we're going to hear from them both in the next half hour. Did you bring the cactus on it?

Yeah? Yeahay.

There's a small work of art by my bed that I say hello to every morning and say good night to every night. I think of the day it arrived in the River Cafe from Los Angeles, wrapped in layers of bubble wrap. I knew then unwrapping it that this was one I would never let out of my sight. The artist was ed Rusche, and the word in bright red, says Yum. I've known ed Risha's work since the early seventies.

Shall I read your recipe, but I'd.

Like to hear yours. You'll be the first person to read a recipe that is not a river cafe recipe, And I think that's good.

What is that cactus omelet which I make occasionally? Do you have to get Nopolito's little cactus pads that they slice into little bits? And so? Says utensils omelet pan are similar type pan with rounded bottom, mixing bowl, wire, whisk or fork. Instructions. Break two eggs in bowls slightly under mix with whisk or fork. Heat butter in pan and ntil it bubbles and begins to turn brown. Add the eggs and let them sit in the pan until

Where does this recipe come from?

I sort of made it up, yeah, And I always like the taste of they're kind of slimy of cactus, you know, nopoletos, but they have a flavor all their own, and I've always liked them.

Yeah, because you know, where we live, we don't get cactus cacti. So was it when you came out here to you at it?

Yeah?

You go in the desert?

Uh, well, Los Angeles.

I've talked to artists. I've interviewed Damien and Tracy, but I haven't had an artist or painted about We talk about food and how food in their life and food in their art. But you actually painted with food, use egg yolk, and you usedn't you. Is that a certain period that you started painting with with actually food.

Yeah, maybe I was frustrated with art materials or it felt like I had reached a apex or a stopping off point. And then I thought about why you can make marks on paper or on canvas with any number of things. Why does it have to be pigments? And so then I started using these things like axle, grease and caviar, and well, it's of course egg, and it's pretty stable and and it hardens and it's proven to be pretty pretty stable over the years.

Also, the paintings that you did with caviar. Still yeah, still still there.

They've yellowed a little bit. But yeah, that's what do we call that entropy or something?

But you don't do anymore.

No, I haven't done that for a while. Maybe we should, but don't give me any idea.

I think I'm going to give you an idea. When I came to a studio, you have an orchard in the back, and I was wondering, you know, what what does that mean to you to have fruit growing in behind your studio.

Well, fortunately I got this building that had a large backyard I had no real use for, so I sort of divided the backyard in half and I thought, well, I'll just put an orchard in here. And I've always wanted to gross interest and other things too, figs, pomegranates, cherries. And then I've got some raised beds there that that I grow. I was growing the world's hottest pepper the boot you're Lochia. It's like an Indian called ghost pepper.

That it judges that competition. But you cook a lot, don't you. That recipe for an omelet is a really interesting recipe because it's using an ingredient that is so local. You know, you go into great depth to tell how you fry the eggs, you season it, the heat of the pan. That's a chef's recipe.

Well it's sort of hit and miss, you know, And so that's fine. Since I'm usually cooking for myself, it doesn't matter. But only other thing I really cook is chili, and I like to make chili. I make it without onions, without beans, and without tomatoes. That's fun to make, and that takes a few hours to do that, but it's worth it.

When you're painting, how do you eat and paint generally?

And I don't even eat lunch. I mean I will maybe have a banana or a piece of fruit, and that's my lunch. I don't eat three meals a day like I used to. But I know it's in our artistic tradition. It's always been a ceremony with artists to stop working at eleven forty five and sit on and I don't drink wine. Yeah, so, and then you know, it's also a tradition to have wine with lunch.

But in New York in the kind of sixties seventies, wasn't there the whole thing where artists would be in their studios all day, very solitary, and then go to Max's or to you know, to the culture of kind of being alone and then going out every night. And were you ever part of that culture or was it lle.

Well, yeah, it's the pandemonium of crowds of people in a place like Max's, Kansas City or any of those kind of places, and it was almost ceremonial. You know, you'd go and have great fun and drink, and uh, that was part of life.

I guess you live in New York.

Did You never did live in New York. No. It was always too complicated or too expensive for me to live there. And uh, just the idea of trying to take a two by four across town was such an issue that made California impossibly convenient.

Yeah, we saw Frank Gary yesterday and we talked about the camaraderie between for him, many more artists and architects. He just loved the feeling of the la kind of artists being together here. Was that part of your world as well?

Oh yeah, yeah. Did he tell you that his favorite restaurant was the Pacific Dining? Yes, he did, and they closed it.

I think, yeah, he loved that place. Did you ever go there?

Oh yeah, I went there with him too, and.

Mister Chow Tina Chow, and yeah, oh yeah, he's a great man.

I went here one time and I with a friend and he said can I bring a friend along? And I said, yeah, who is it? And he said Graucho Marx No. And so we met at Chow's here and Graucho comes in and we all sit down and have a good time. But then the food comes, and Graucho has his food sent in from Nate and Al's delicatessen. He didn't even have the He said, I've heard about this place. I've heard about this place, And so he dined at Chow's restaurant without having its foods.

I've heard of people, you know. Of course, people bring their own wine at the River Caffine. People like to bring their own wine and once somebody bought their own truffle. They've been to Italy and they brought a white truffle and asked us if we would grade it for them over their pasta. But I never actually have heard of anybody actually ordering their own food. But I suppose if you're Grouch and Marx. Yeah, but did you go to chows a lot? Who would go there with you? Oh?

Lots of different people. I mean used to go there with Tim Leary and his wife and they were regulars there for a good while. And it's so good and so traditional. I mean they opened I nineteen seventy five or something like that, and they established a menu that they really didn't vary from in London.

They used to have the kind of cart that you could actually make the noodles.

Yeah, yeah, they do that here too.

Yeah we should all. Okay, are you going out much? Are you trying to stay quiet?

I'm happy to you know. I love loud Hollywood parties, but I don't miss them one iota.

I I just been there and done that. Why did you go to the desert?

Yeah, I go to the desert.

What do you eat there? You hunt?

I used to do that, but I don't do that anymore. And I have a lot of quail out there and there there, oh it's out north of it's east of Big Bear Lake. It's not the kind of desert that is like palm Springs with palm trees. No palm trees up there. They have Joshua trees. If you know what those crazy things look like. Beautiful. They're very spiky, spik spiky, and they look They got called Joshua trees because the pioneers thought they looked like silhouettes of biblical figures. So

Where you've kind of been through hell in this country with our previous president and the wars and everything. And I have a beautiful poster that you sent me, which is a treasure. That was enough. Oh h can you tell me the story of enough.

I don't know where that came from. It's just well, Norman Lear asked me if I would do something, and so that was just some incentive to make some statement about the condition of America, and you know where people sit on the subject, and so expressing myself in that way in a poster was fun to do. You know. It was like, enough of this kind of politics. We've got to move on from this to something better, and luckily it moved that way.

Yeah, maybe it'd be nice to talk about from the beginning. Tell me about where you grew up.

I was born in Omaha, Nebraska, very center of the United States, and then we moved to Oklahoma when I was like five years old. So then I grew up from there, and it was kind of a cultural wasteland in a lot of ways. Food especially, I mean, there was no such thing as an artichoke or an avocado, barely no such thing as sushi there is there now,

Or what state, New York state New and we had real Southern Italian foods.

Yeah.

I thought Italian food was meat boles and spaghetti and eggplant parmesana and pizza pie until I went to Italy thirty years later. Yeah, But go back to the pizza pie. When did that come?

Well, that started coming when around the time I was in high school, and it became a popular go to type of food, kind of novel and unique. And there were half a dozen places in Oklahoma City that actually served pizza pie, and one place was called Sussy's. That was the place you'd always go to.

Who would cook in your house? Was it your mother?

Yeah? Did your father mom cooked? No, father didn't really cook so much, but Mom tossed everything together and you know, it was a really it was all meat and potatoes. I like her pies particularly, and she made a cherry pie that I always liked. Also she made rhubarb pie, which was another thing, And so that was big.

Do you think the cherries were fresh or did she get them from the cans?

She'd get them from a can or sometimes when they were there, she would get them fresh. Yeah, And the effort was not so much into absolutely fresh food back then. No, canned food was very big and exciting. Yeah, And then came frozen food after that, and there's you know, there's a big debate over those nutritional value of those foods.

Did your mom work? So she would work all day and then come home.

She was a housekeeper and prepared food for us, And no, she didn't have a job. And so I grew up in the Bible Belt there and we were Catholics, so we were called mackerel snappers is what people would call us, meaning you don't eat meat on Friday, you eat fish on Friday. So mackerel snappers. But the kind of food that they served there, the only international food was called Chinese food, and every Chinese restaurant would always say on the outside of the building Chinese and American food.

To alleviate the fear of working Chinese restaurants, and.

So you could get Chinese. Yes, you could get chop suey things like that, and then you could also get a hamburger. So they were gonna offer you Chinese food, but also just in case, please come anyway because we can make a hamburger for you.

Familiar. Yeah, but did you go to restaurants, I mean, would your parents take you out for a meal and a time.

Occasionally we'd go to barbecue and that was popular. Then the one food that was really hit it big was okra Friday okra and they grow, yeah, they grow it in a big way there, and so there's lots of corn that you're giving almost every day. Yeah. Also during the war we had a victory garden. It was sort of pick yourself up by your booststraps by growing your own food and participating in the war effort World War two.

Yeah, you said that, You said once said that you thought that Oklahoma was like a black and white movie. Do you think that? Do you think back on those days?

I still do when I think back on it, But as I go back there occasionally I see that it's more progressive than I allow my mind to make it be. Yeah, so you know, it's caught up with the rest of the world.

What's happened to your house there? Do you still have?

It still stands? Yeah?

When was the first time you went to Europe?

About nineteen sixty one? And I went there with my mother and brother and we bought a little Citron two CV automobile in Paris and drove it around Europe and then came. Yeah, it was her first time too. So what was that like?

What was it like? Food wise?

Well, food wise, well, we we were kind of on a budget, So there wasn't nothing particularly fancy, but just the idea of having you know, stumbling onto wild strawberry which I'd never had before, those tiny little wild strawberries was great. That was in France. We drove all over Europe and for about four or five months, four or

Did you paint or draw?

Yeah? I took a little homemade kit a package that I would carry around and you know, allow me to do something on about eight x ten format, and brought paints along with me and worked like that. And my mother came back to the States after about two months, and then I stayed over there by myself for a while.

One of the things that I think is very moving about your studio, part from the garden and the trees and of the fruit, is there seems to be a very strong community there and that when you come to London for your shows. When we went out to dinner afterwards, I think It probably was the Tait and then there was a dinner at the National Gallery. Because you had two shows, you were the first artists, contemporary artists to show singularly in the National Gallery.

I was told that. I found it hard to believe, but it's true. Yeah, and then I think virget Riley maybe had something yeah recently there. Yeah. Do you bring everybody with you pretty much?

That's so nice.

People that work with me, Yeah, travel with me. Yeah, it's good.

You're animals, they're dogs. How many do you have any idea of how many dogs?

Uh? Dana has five other dogs besides Dexter, so you know she's got her handful. I mean she's got she needs a kennel license.

Do you when you travel do you take a dog?

He goes with me every.

So you have a painting called Dexter.

Again, don't give me any ideas.

Can I just tell the story about I've had such a kind of passion for the Ruby painting. No Ruby meant to me. It filled me with kind of imagination, and I kept thinking, who is Ruby? So I just dreamt about who Ruby could be. I thought she might be a woman that you were in love with when you were a teenager in Alcoholma. I thought she'd might be your mother's name. I thought she could be a disappointment, somebody who left you, and I thought she could be

That's right, that's right, But it was not the inspiration for that painting or that work. It wasn't. The ruby I did came long before the dog. Actually, yeah, And so I don't I'm not really sure where that a name came from. It didn't come from a person in my life. I didn't know, but I liked ruby as a feminine name, and it's just got a really good sound to it. And also it has a double meaning too with the gem ruby, and so it just meant that to me and kind of was an excuse to make a work.

It's a beautiful work. It's a beautiful, beautiful work. Thank you. I have one last question. So you've described food as a journey across Oklahoma to California. You've described it as an explosion of Rold's strawberries in France. You've used it in your work, used to actually paint made out of food. But if you were feeling that you needed food is comfort? Would you say there's a food you turned to in comfort?

I would say that some kind of soup might be the answer. It's kind of traditionally of healing kind of food, so soup of almost any kind.

Maybe you're chili, would your chili could.

Be although chili might make you hop up and down, yeah, they may not be so RESTful, but comfort food might be in the form of some kind of vegetable soup.

Yeah, I got that good. So are you staying here for a bit, you're going.

Actually, I am going to the desert. Yeah today. Yeah.

I hope I'll see you soon.

Yeah.

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