Professor Butter Beard’s “Spring in Town”
Lately, on my sunrise walks with Nellie, I have been experiencing these little whoops and hollers of joyful hope as I see all the varieties of spring daffodils dancing in the morning breeze and smell the wild chives as Nellie rolls through them with a huge smile on her big face. The other pervasive aroma is fresh earth as neighbors turn over the sod in their flower and vegetable gardens. It reminds me that it will only be a matter of weeks until I can visit with all my farmer friends at the Red Bank Farmers Market on Sunday mornings. And that makes me very happy!
These longings for reuniting with well-grounded friends (yes, pun intended), bring to mind the distinctive and soulful artwork of Grant DeVolson Wood. He was an American painter best known for his works depicting the rural American Midwest, particularly “American Gothic”, which has become an iconic example of 20th-century American art. Born and raised by his mother in rural Iowa, Wood enrolled in The Handicraft Guild, an art school run entirely by women in Minneapolis in 1910. From 1922 to 1928, Wood made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially Impressionism and post-Impressionism. However, it was the naturalism and realism of the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck that influenced him to take on the simplicity of this style of seeing and to incorporate it in his own works.
It was sometime in March or early April of 1941 in Iowa City, when Wood began work on a pair of paintings on the theme of springtime. He completed them that summer, in the northern Iowa resort town of Clear Lake, where, with his secretary and close friend, Park Rinard, he rented a lakeside cottage and an old abandoned train depot nearby as a studio.
“Spring in Town” is a small-town scene of a busy spring day, with a prominent church overlooking the immaculate neighborhood of single-family houses, where all the inhabitants complete their springtime chores including garden planting, quilt beating, roof repair and lawn mowing. Sue Taylor writes that Wood drew several motifs from direct observation in Iowa City for “Spring in Town,” including the shirtless gardening boy modeled by George Devine, son of the University of Iowa's football coach. The painting was so effective in conveying a happy fantasy of everyday American life that after the U.S. entered World War II, The Saturday Evening Post published the picture as their magazine cover as a visual response to the question "For What Are We Fighting?"
Wood wrote of “Spring in Town” and its prequel “Spring in the Country”: “In making these paintings, I had in mind something which I hope to convey to a fairly wide audience in America—the picture of a country rich in the arts of peace; a homely, lovable nation, infinitely worthy of any sacrifice necessary to its preservation." He continued to sketch and paint Iowa landscapes with the same passionate love of his homeland until his untimely death in 1942, just one year after completion of the two springtime paintings.
All these thoughts led me to pull out the blueberry jam that I made late last summer with the berries purchased at the Hauser Hill Farms market stall. Bernadette would set perfectly ripe pints of blueberries and blackberries aside knowing that I would find a way to thoroughly honor their deliciousness. And she knew that she would be rewarded with sumptuous baked treats the following week! I’m counting the four weeks until I can laugh with her again and discover something new grown in her family’s springtime gardens.
Blueberry Jam Streusel Squares
(makes about 16 squares when using an 8” square pan)
3 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 ½ tsp kosher salt
2 tsps Chinese Five-Spice Powder (separately)
Zest of one lime
12 ounces (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
½ cup rolled oats, lightly toasted (in the oven or in a non-stick pan on the stovetop)
½ cup unsweetened coconut, lightly toasted (in the oven or in a non-stick pan on the stovetop)
1 cup blueberry jam (I use the blackberry/blueberry jam that I made last summer)
1) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2) Butter an 8x8-inch pan with butter and place a sheet of parchment inside leaving a 2 inch extension over the sides of the pan.
3) Lightly toast the oats and coconut, separately, and set aside to cool completely.
4) In a standing mixer with the paddle, stir together the flour, sugar, salt and 1 tsp of the Five-Spice. Stir in the zest of the one lime.
5) Add the butter, one ½ inch piece of the sticks at a time, until the dough begins to clump together.
6) Remove 2/3 of the dough and press into the prepared 8” square pan. Dimple the crust with your fingers to create pools of jam in the final product.
7) Bake the shortbread crust for 25 minutes until golden brown. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
8) While the crust bakes, add the toasted oats and coconut and the remaining 1 tsp of the Five-Spice to the remaining 1/3 dough in the standing mixer and stir together with the paddle to combine.
9) When the crust has cooled to room temperature, spread the jam over the crust and then crumble the streusel topping over the jam. Leave the topping loose – do not pat down.
10) Return the pan to the oven, reduce the heat to 350 degrees, and bake for another 25 minutes until the top is golden.
11) Cool to room temperature on a wire rack. Remove the large square from the pan (via the parchment) and cut into 16 squares to serve.
Grant Wood “Self Portrait” 1932, “American Gothic” 1930, and “Daughters of the Revolution” 1932
