Today we’d like to introduce you to Joseph Shuldiner.
Joseph, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
The Institute of Domestic Technology was originally conceived as an educational adjunct to a renegade backyard farmers’ market in Altadena, California, an unincorporated township nestled against the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains just northeast of Los Angeles.
Originally billed as the Altadena Urban Farmers’ Market University–I conceived this market activity as a value-added contribution to the monthly, under-the-radar guerrilla gathering of 30 backyard farmers and home foodcrafters. While the market took place on the front lawn of Market organizers Gloria Putnam and Stephen Rudicel’s private residence, I assembled a group of gifted speakers to demonstrate their techniques for this makeshift “University” in the house’s solarium. They spoke about the budding urban backyard farm movement, the modern resurgence of sweet preserve making, canning, homemade condiments, cheese making, and bread made with wild yeast starters.
An enraptured audience of close to a hundred market-goers attended. Shocked, I asked myself, “Where did all this come from?” Why did people want to learn how to make something they could so easily purchase pre-made at any supermarket? I would get the answer to these questions over time, from the Institute’s students, many of whom told strikingly similar stories. Without fail, a handful of students in almost every class would reminisce about their rural, childhood canning rituals – and describe the ‘how-to’ they had lost along with the matriarchal branch of their family tree. Other students expressed their dissatisfaction with being subjected to the marketing of corporations. I also heard a lot about students’ newly discovered desire for self-expression, and observed a kind of growing curiosity I now refer to as the Deconstruction Effect: what would that jar of xxxx look like broken into its component parts?
In the last 5 years, I’ve discovered new foodcrafters to teach classes for the Institute and developed curriculum for a wide range of topics.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
While the press was incredibly generous writing about us the first few years, it was a challenge to keep the Institute visible and the students engaged with new classes and teachers.
Food is a tricky business. Chef’s will testify to this. Learning about food and cooking hopefully will continue to be of interest to people, especially conscious food, which sometimes can’t be made in in 20 minutes or in 5 minutes in a microwave.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
We’re teaching how to make ingredients which separates us from more traditional cooking classes which focus on making complete meals.
I was also asked to start a Certified Farmers’ Market in Altadena. I was known for my involvement and curating of renegade food crafters (backyard farmers, pop up chefs etc.) so I decided to create the market a bit different than most farmers’ markets. My assistant Elizabeth Bowman and I courted backyard farmers to become certified with the Los Angeles County Agricultural Commission and sell at the market. We also incubated new prepared food vendors, providing many them with their first public selling experience.
At that time, I was still working as a publication art director for newspapers, magazines and book publishers and finally wrote my own cookbook: Pure Vegan (Chronicle Books). That experience propelled me to devote myself 100% to food related projects.
Around that time, Adele Yellin, owner of Grand Central Market, hired me and Kevin West (who was teaching jam making for the Institute) to take on the role of Creative Directors/Curators of the revitalization of the (now) 100-year-old landmark.
What were you like growing up?
I have this fascination with “where things come from.” In fact, it predated my founding of the Institute by decades. Most ten-year old boys beg their parents for the latest popular toy or whatever the cool kids are wearing at school. I on the other hand, wanted a Corona-brand hand-cranked flour mill and a Salton electric yogurt-maker. I pleaded with my poor mother to help me learn to make sun-dried leather fruit, solar tea and dandelion wine. (I had, admittedly, read too much Ray Bradbury.) She had no idea how to help me. Libraries were useless and online resources where still another few decades away. I started to imagine running away to a commune where, I had heard counterculture hippies had gone back to nature and were relearning how to make things from scratch.
One day my Mother took to me to a handmade craft gallery in Silver Lake (we lived nearby in Echo Park). It was there that I finally found my “pillow book” – Alicia Bay Laurel’s “Living on the Earth”. Based on her years living on the Wheeler Ranch commune in Sonoma, living on the Earth is a hippie earth-mother’s almanac that tells you how to live off the land. It is handwritten in journal form complete with wonderful illustrations and how-to diagrams. I was transfixed. Here, at last, were seemingly all the how-to secrets that had eluded me. I vowed then and there to learn how to make every single thing in the book.
As I grew older, I learned to put my unconventional interest in how things were made behind me in order to “fit in.” Only as an adult did I begin to rediscover my childhood fascination with what food really is and the way in which it ends up in our pantries and on our plates.
My Grandfather, Joseph Lewitzky, was a Depression-era visionary painter and my Mother’s sister was the Los Angeles choreographer Bella Lewitzky, they grew up briefly at Llano del Rio, a “Utopian Community” near Lancaster and later became politically progressive activists. My aunt Bella was called upon to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), during the McCarthy era, and famously stated on record. “I am a dancer, not a singer” when asked to name names.
I have tried to carry on my family’s passion for justice through my work in food.
Contact Info:
- Website: instituteofdomestictechnology.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @instituteofdomestictechnology
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