Good Beer Makes Good Art

So I walked into the kitchen earlier this evening and wondered why my red-headed housemate — who’s hardly an at-home drunk, especially on a school night(!) — was un-bagging a big bottle of Guinness and an accompanying one of cheap red wine. “To reduce it,” she replied to my inquiry. “What the hell are you cooking that requires a reduction of stout? And wine?” I refused to lose my furrowed brow. “No, it’s for an art project,” she said, as if were the logical assumption, and proceeded to let the secret out, which was pretty creative.

a meal in a bottle

By reducing the beer (or wine, or Mountain Dew, or Skittles — all consumables-cum-art-materials that are part of her project), the liquid is boiled out and it turns into a viscous, tar-like goo.

simmering stout

And she’ll use this substance as ink for silkscreening. Cool! I mean, I can definitely think of better uses for beer, but this one’s pretty inventive (much more so than getting shit-faced, which is great but any dummy can do it).

one large bottle (minus a tiny jar-glass for yours truly....) reduces to only this thick pile

tasted like burnt tar (and a little like meat and potatoes, ahh Guinness)

I’ll post photos of the finished silkscreen as well. In other news, you may have already heard that Nancy Wilson, the badass guitarist of Heart and one of my childhood and current guitar heroes, and her husband of 24 years, Cameron Crowe, filed for divorce last week. But more than it being a bummer in terms of two cool celebrities severing forces (he brought us both Singles — not the greatest film but an arguably great soundtrack — and Almost Famous — with its golden “We’re not groupies, we’re here for the music. We’re band-aids!” premise), it is the end of Crowe’s reign as an admirable model: The journalist got the hot rock star!

ah, love: is the pen mightier than the sword? nah.