(#137) CHEZ PANISSE 1989:

Edition of 1795 of which 300 copies are signed 1-300; 26 are signed A-Z as artist's proofs; one copy is signed as a dedication copy and three sets are signed as progressives.

July 26, 1989 Thirteen colors. (CAUTION: Fugitive inks) 17" x 24"

Client: Chez Panisse Café & Restaurant, 1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley CA 94709. Telephone (510) 548-5525 A-Z: Artist's own use Dedication copy: Alice Louise Waters Progressives: One set to Alice Waters

Three couples, long-time friends, sitting around and talking and laughing. We'd been invited for dinner but our hostess was no cook and our host couldn't boil water. So we decided to make spaghetti and meatballs like we did when we were students and always broke. Spaghetti and meatballs and toasted garlic bread and salad with an oil and vinegar dressing, and cheap red wine, the kind that comes wrapped in straw and you save the bottle and put different colored candles in it and keep it for two or three years until you get tired of it.

To see if it's done you toss a strand of spaghetti up to the ceiling and if it sticks it's ready. At some point somebody would just paint right over it. Most student kitchens looked like this. So we started and our host was the cook, even if he didn't know beans, and of course everybody put their oar in and he got exasperated with all the contradictory advice so we decided that each of us in turn would be totally in charge of the spaghetti sauce for ten minutes and then they would have to shut up.

So over the course of an hour each one of us took a turn and the sauce was really great and there sure was plenty of it, what with six different attitudes going all at once. A good spaghetti sauce needs a splash of leftover coffee.