THE LAWS OF FIZIX

After a relentlessly long bus ride into the city, we met up with Fiza at Ventana 244 for the opening of Glenn Goldberg’s exhibition The Sunroom.  Her hair was longer than I've ever seen it. She was wearing slim black pants, Caterpillar boots, and a grey and black flannel button-down. Her khaki windbreaker was peppered with gesso and work. This is also what I remember her wearing when we met two years ago.

 

It's always exciting to see old friends. We went out for drinks and a round of pool that night. It was a long game. We're not very good at pool, but it was fun. Then she took us back to the room she's renting above a small community space in Brooklyn. On Sundays you can hear music from the church services they have downstairs. The rest of the week there's a roostering construction crew crowing outside her window.

 

Fiza’s working on large graphite drawings of broccoli, and other foods, but mostly broccoli. On one of the three walls in her studio, she has written down “broccoli is passive aggressive.” She says she imagines people going to a party and being exclusively served broccoli as though it were a feast. The thought is entertaining enough. The drawings themselve are on the edge of being abstracted by the viewer’s tendency to read other similar imagery of foliage.

 

In the mornings she would make us a simple but tasty scramble, with the option of an oddly fitting Inglehoffer Sriracha mustard. You could probably put that shit on anything and it would taste good. Good call Fiza. She served this with a seedy bread toasted in a pan on the stove. She also steeped a milky spiced black tea called Danedar. Fiza claims this is one of only two types of tea that one should drink; "anything else would be a waste."

Fiza's generosity extended even further, and this is saying a great deal given these meals she prepared for us everyday. She opened her studio for the pop-up Homebodies Brooklyn, and the show had a great turnout. I think we sold five Giniewskis that night. She also invited us to set up shop in her studio to make some artwork in the days following.  Fiza was a lovely host.