Is cooking an art or a craft? Whichever side you come down on, cooking is clearly creative. That’s why Brittany Fan—painter, illustrator, graphic designer, photographer, food blogger, and self-professed “all-around maker”—loves it.
A native of Blacksburg, Fan came to UVA for a degree in studio art, art history, and arts administration and stayed for a master’s in education. But her intention to teach in elementary school turned into a career as an artist; she works for the Journey Group as a graphic designer.
Fan says she came to college with a sense that art was something that happens in white rooms, but soon realized it’s “something that should be out in the world, among people.” From that perspective, she sees her role as an artist as “connection—as a format for story-telling and a way of sharing stories.” And cooking (a skill she learned at home from her mother) is “the most approachable form of creativity—we all eat.”
While Fan’s blog is called The Culinary Artist, she doesn’t concentrate on creating new recipes from scratch or constructing visually fabulous food (“You can make anything look good—or at least attention-grabbing,” she says). She may start with a recipe, but she usually adapts it as she goes. Sometimes she likes the result so much, she will replicate it over and over, and she uses the blog as a way to standardize and share her favorites—banana bread, chocolate chip cookies, and her variation on Katharine Hepburn’s brownies.
To Fan, there’s creativity in making even uncomplicated foods. During the pandemic, she made a lot of bread.
“It’s so simple—yeast, flour, salt, and water—but you get to watch this organism create something,” she says. “It’s both observation and meditation,” themes that are common in her paintings. But bread is also a communal food.
“Think of the images—passing bread or rolls at a meal, breaking bread, even the Christian imagery of bread,” she says. So last summer, Fan’s project was 50 different kinds of pizza. “I fed all my friends.”
Feeding others is part of Fan’s passion for food. “I love cooking for other people. I love hosting dinner parties, inviting people who otherwise might not spend time together.” Once or twice a year, she will have friends over to make Chinese dumplings, a communal event she remembers from her childhood. During the pandemic shutdown, she took samples of her dishes to friends for them to taste-test. “Right now I’m on a soup kick,” Fan says—a group of friends gathers for soup, bread, and salad.
Fan loves taking unusual ingredients and seeing what can be done with them; one of her blog posts is about hibiscus tea, made from hibiscus calyxes she got through her local CSA. Not all her creations merit sharing, however. Last year, she took a stab at peony jelly. “It wasn’t bad,” she says. “Slightly fruity, sweet, and I’d put lemon in it.” But she hadn’t realized how much jelly she would end up with—and how little need she had for peony jelly. All in all, she decided, “I’d rather get jam from the store.”
What new foods lie ahead? “I’ve never made cinnamon rolls,” says Fan. “Maybe that’s on the list.”