To say that this photo of one of two of Yun’s paintings on view doesn’t do it justice doesn’t really do justice to the idiom “doesn’t do justice to” but since it’s all I took and I can’t find anything online, it should give you an idea and perhaps send you to Newton to see it for yourself.

The botanical and cellular imagery exists at a scale that requires you to get right up close to the painting (thankfully its not glazed like the photos) which is well worth doing.  It reminds me of some of the work in the DeCordova’s show Drawn to Detail, blogged here at limeduck almost exactly a year ago.  To quote from the artist’s statement,

These recent works create micro-organisms that seem to float in their own universe, a spatial construction with infinite temporal layers found in all organisms, spanning from a primordial period to the present moment. Such a trajectory suggests an apparently infinite arc of time. As the layers accumulate, meaning emerges and finds a new integration which points to an overarching synthesis. I feel the same event happening repeatedly in time, creating new meanings:  the micro-organism, portrayed as floating in an infinite universe, interacts with a dynamic trajectory linking past, present, and future.

Also on view were several photographs of Iceland which were subtle and beautiful, playing with the reflectivity of water and the scale of the Icelandic landscape.  I hope to see more of Yun’s work sometime, maybe in a more accessible setting more amenable to showing photographs.

Hungry from art-peeping and at sea in Newton, I let the GPS bring me back to Bread and Lily, where I was rewarded with a delicious roasted salmon dish with a salad of green apples and lettuce.

Against my better judgement, I also indulged in a peanut butter iced cupcake with a reeses cup embedded in the top.  It was gone before I even thought about photographing it.  Owner Ben Cutler was friendly and helpful as ever, touting B&L’s new Fall menu.  Well worth the detour on a perfect New England Fall day.

First up, Bread and Lily in Newton, where owner Ben Cutler put on an impressive spread for some food bloggers.  Bread & Lily offers a full range of edibles from the usual cafe stuff to some impressive house-made sandwiches, catering and even ice cream made on site.  They smoke their own salmon and make their own whitefish salad too.  Cutler (brother of non-cheese blogger @jeffcutler) explained his “practical approach to doing the right thing” wherein he buys organic and sustainable products unless that would make the resulting menu items unaffordable.  Bread and Lily also makes in-house whatever they can at the highest quality, but buys elsewhere from the leading suppliers what they can’t (yet?) perfect themselves.

At left, oven roasted turkey sandwich with cranberry relish, applewood bacon and thyme mayo.  At right, a very generous broccoli quiche.

Slightly closer to HQ but somehwat less convenient to the Green line is Ana Sortun’s Sofra Bakery.  You may remember Sortun as the brains behind Oleana, the birthplace of Random Apps of Kindness.

Sofra is awash in the cuisine of Turkey, Lebanon and Greece, with lots of yogurts, sweets and pastries, mezze, sandwiches and baklava.  I had orange blossom lemonade and a za’atar croissant,and was unable to leave without buying a bag of sugar smoke pecans.

Those sugar smoke pecans are quite impressive, by the way.  Steep at $12 per bag, but they go a long way.

Which reminds me in a tangential way.. . I returned to Wrapro with Prof. M and among other tastiness, we enjoyed pistachio ma’amoul:

Greg Paul and his family recipes are more than welcome to scoff (as long as they bring samples) but these were awfully delicious.  Ma’amoul come in different shapes and different fillings.  These were sort of oval and filled with delicious pistachio and dusted with powdered sugar.  There are some great cafes byond the usual waddle range, but also some undiscovered desserts at the usual haunts.