Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark Gravel.
Mark, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My love for food started when I was young, and my curiosity eventually led me into the kitchen. Hanging out with my Mom and Grandmother while they were cooking was one of my favorite things. Tasting and helping out where I could. Going to roadside farm stands during the summer and experiencing a perfectly ripe peach or watermelon was the best. I loved the sensory experience that food provided and how it formed memories. I knew it would be something I wanted to pursue for the rest of my life.
Food has also taken me on a lot of adventures. Moving to new cities and diving into the food and cooking communities was always a fun way to make new friends and immerse myself in a place. It allowed me to collaborate with a variety of incredibly talented and forward-thinking farmers, cooks, educators, activists, and artists. It also enabled me to explore my interests in cooking, art, and design. So far, it’s been a gratifying trip full of many ups and downs, and I’m grateful for where it’s led me and what’s to come.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Working as an artist and food maker is always full of challenges – mainly covering living expenses when I started. But, a lot of part-time and freelance jobs allowed me the time to work on projects and develop my practice. More serious challenges along the way involved navigating addiction and depression. A big lesson from all of this was to keep going. Now, most of my challenges revolve around keeping projects afloat as they get more extensive in scope and require more resources to bring into the world. The levels of uncertainty and possibility are pretty scary and incredibly exciting.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
Over the past 15 years, I’ve been able to organize a variety of self-propelled and collaborative projects – everything from creating temporary restaurants to producing printed works to making packaged food. Engaging with important subjects in fun and creative ways is what drives my work.
My first project, Good Farm Movement, celebrated the art of agriculture and was a visual exploration of the resourcefulness, resilience, and beauty of small farming and local food communities. It sought to examine our relationship with food systems and food production through visual art.
Bean-In was a temporary, free restaurant established at California College of the Arts in collaboration with Natasha Wheat and Sarah Magrish Cline. It evolved from a series of meals I organized at a space in San Francisco and took place over twelve hours, during which participants could wander into a room filled with living, potted bean vines, eat a free bean-based meal, lounge on recycled burlap bags filled with beans, and take part in discussions.
After the Bean-In series, I made Kill the Recipe, a cookbook and visual guidebook on the basics of radical beanmaking and plant-based eating. Theoretically, it was a vision for changing the way we think about cooking and eating in our homes. Practically, it sought to reimagine our meals through the lens of beans and illustrated how to create an endlessly variable number of healthy, convenient dishes from a simple pot of beans.
My current focus is on Dirtbag Bar, which was initially supposed to be a sweet treat for a food stand project I was doing, but then covid hit, and everything shut down. So, without the food stand being active, I turned my attention to creating Dirtbag Bar as a packaged food project. I was also deep diving into my mental health at the time, which is why Dirtbag’s mental health fundraising mission is essential.
Inspired by traditional food fundraising models, like candy bar fundraisers, bake sales, and Girl Scout cookies, I thought it would be fun to reimagine the classic candy bar fundraiser but make something with clean, simple, whole-food ingredients instead of typical candy bar ingredients. Fast forward to 2023, and after a lot of experiments, sampling, and many delays, I joined some great food markets and will launch with Erewhon in spring 2023.
What matters most to you? Why?
What matters to me are questions like: How does food affect our society? How does food affect people not only physically but mentally and emotionally? How do the foods we eat nurture our mental health? These questions are what I’d like my work to focus on going forward.
Contact Info:
- Website: dirtbagbar.com
- Instagram: @dirtbagbar
