SAN PABLO COOKBOOK LAUNCH BY LEXA WALSH

The San Pablo Cookbook is a portrait of a neighborhood workforce through their recipes. The types of recipes offered – recipes being sets of instructions for virtually anything – are as diverse as the workers and businesses along the San Pablo corridor near the Berkeley/Oakland border. There’s a Recipe for Tire Change, a Recipe for Lucid Dreaming, a Recipe for a Dance Duo, and recipes for both a Stellar Sex Life and for Love. There are recipes for food, too, like Isuara’s Flan, Khaled’s Chicken Shwarma, and Shelby’s Vegan Nacho Casserole. They are serious and funny, joyous and sublime.

Community cookbooks have a long legacy in the United States of identifying and celebrating communities, such as museum docents, church groups and the Junior League. They have been used not only for fundraising, but also as collective memoirs of place and culture. The San Pablo Cookbook is a platform for multiple voices to question and experience alternative modes of belonging. It hopes to both incite curiosity and create a unique group identity among the workforce.

The San Pablo Cookbook is brought to you by Kala Art Institute’s Print Public Residency Award, with an accompanying exhibition at Kala Gallery through July 13th.