"Aşure (Noah's Pudding)"

This is an exciting day for me because I get to show you the painting I've been plugging away at with very few pauses for the past two weeks. 😊

This piece is an illustration for a poem I wrote quite some time ago and which has since appeared in The Chestnut Review and has been read aloud at an inter-faith devotional gathering and a separate fundraiser benefitting arts programs at a local high school. It's been well-loved, and I've been pondering an upgrade for it.

A little background: I grew up in Turkey until I was fifteen, and I have cheery childhood memories of the Muslim holiday of Ashura in the ‘90s and 2000s. In Turkish tradition, Aşure is commemorated with a porridge-like dessert (also called aşure) made out of grains, legumes, spices, nuts, and dried fruits. The pudding is said to have its origins in Noah’s exodus from the ark, and is prepared in each home using a different assortment of ingredients.

In this poem and the subsequent painting, I wanted to celebrate the strange assortments of ingredients that come together to shape each of us, and the value I find in pooling our histories and experiences. So here it is:
At roughly 16x12 inches, this is the biggest illustration I've ever created, and I spent over 70 hours designing, sketching, drafting, drawing, and painting it. (Click here to go behind the scenes and see what the process was like from start to finish.)

The Symbolism
I know some folks will have questions about the odd objects in this piece and the symbolism behind their inclusion, so here's the scoop on some of the detail areas:

The Pigeon: The pigeon is included here as a nod to the Noah's Ark story around which the myth of Ashura revolves. In the poem, I mentioned Noah's family leaving the ark after "deluge, slosh, and antsy bird-watching." The bird in question is of course the dove Noah sends out in the story to scout around for signs of dry land; the bird who brings back the olive branch. But in my version, I've imagined the dove as a pigeon for two reasons: 1. Doves ARE, in fact, pigeons, with no formal scientific separation between the two, and I love reminding people that the humble grey urban bird is of the same exalted family as the shining universal symbol of peace. 2. Pigeons always remind me of time I spent in my very early childhood years trying to keep up with my dad's long strides through the busy streets of Ankara while craning my neck to watch giant clusters of dirty but iridescent birds.

The Hazelnut (Filbert): Turkey is a major global exporter of hazelnuts, and these little round nuts, in addition to being a common Aşure ingredient, played a big role in my childhood. When I was 10, we moved to a small village in Northern Turkey where hazelnut orchards stretched around our house and were harvested in the late summer. During the harvest, the village would empty into those orchards to fill giant sacks with the still-green husks of the hazelnuts, and some of my fondest memories from those years revolve around the hazelnut harvest: picnics in the orchard after a long, hot morning's work; giant husking parties that went on into the early morning hours while hot red Turkish tea was served endlessly in little fluted glasses and raucous music poured from the radio. I wanted the hazelnut in my painting to evoke the fireside feeling of those joyous times. (A poem I wrote about that time was published in Silk + Smoke a few years ago, and you can read it here.)

The Castle: Behind the man playing a violin and every note sprouting wings, you can see a faint, simple drawing of a castle on a hill. This is meant to be Ankara Castle, which I remember always visiting in cold weather and where I had my first pide with an egg cracked over the top. The bright red flag atop the castle walls is too small on my page to hold a crescent and a star, but it is meant to be the scarlet Turkish flag that was always rippling overhead.

The House: The house in this painting is not based on any particular house and does not really resemble any place I have lived except in that it is a bit dingy on the outside while also full of light—like the grey concrete building where I spent the happiest years of my childhood. To me, the "Aşure" poem is primarily about hospitality, and I wanted to underscore the way some of the most generous and authentic hospitality is offered in small homes and by people of little means.

The Toes: Another major component of the "Aşure" poem is the idea that most of us are carrying around our own "pictures of God," and that it is only when we bring those images together and compare notes that we can arrive at real wisdom on the subject of the Divine. In the poem, I name some metaphors I think of as common pictures of God. The man playing the violin is one of these—a picture of God as a creative force calling meaningful and beautiful things into being. The fog on the road is another—God as a mystery, a "cloud of unknowing" as the ancient mystics might have said. The child with red eyes watching the small candle blink is a picture of God as an innocent entity who comes alongside us in our suffering. And the giant toe poised over the sugar ant is perhaps the most common picture of all: the all-powerful, seemingly arbitrary being whose might alone determines right from wrong. In my own life, parsing these pictures (and others) has been an essential part of mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness, and the questions have often been just as important as the answers.

I just loved making this piece, and I would really like to do some more intricate, large-format works over the next year. Unfortunately, my ability to do this kind of complex, time-consuming work is limited by financial constraints. Large works are expensive to produce and can take a long while to find a home. This is one of the reasons my Patreon exists—to help me buy the time to do the work I'm burning to do so that I don't have to pick up as much gig work to make ends meet. I enjoy all my gig jobs, and will likely never drop them completely, but the more time I'm able to spend in my studio, the more things I can create in this, after all, very short time on our strange and wonderful planet.

If you're a paid member over there, THANK YOU. Your support is contributing in a very direct way towards new creations like this one and I can't thank you enough. 🤍

All the best, 
Bryana