Tea Cart Stories Continue on 14th Street

Artist Michele Brody created the Tea Cart Stories exhibition on view in the windows of 97 Orchard Street. She wrote in to let us know that the interactive aspect of the project - listening to people's tea stories over a cup - will continue into the fall:

During the month of October I will continue to gather tea conversations in my roving Tea House - set inside a NYC coffee cart - through the alternative public art Festival Art in Odd Places.

I will be parked on the northeast corner of Irving Place and 14th Street during the following dates and times:

Friday, October 2 (4-6pm)
Saturday-Sunday, October 3-4 (2-6pm)
Friday, October 16 (4-6pm)
Saturday-Sunday, October 17-18 (2-6pm)

Pay Michele a visit and tell her your stories.

Adventures Inside the Tea Cart

Artist Michele Brody chats with a visitor outside 108 Orchard over tea served in cups passed down by her grandmother

Pick a nationality, and you're bound to find its variety of tea somewhere in the New York metro area: South African rooibos, British Earl Grey, green tea, or masala chai, a delicious blend of black tea, milk, spices, and sugar that my friend Kavita's mom, who grew up in a South Asian community in Kenya, would serve when I'd come to visit back in high school. (I've tried, and failed, to replicate the drink at home using a box of masala mixture Kavita gave me, and the sugary, mild Starbucks variety just can't compare.)

The universal quality of the steaming hot drink - it draws friends together in cafes and living rooms around the world, and is something immigrants bring with them when they settle, say, in the Lower East Side - is what artist Michele Brody had in mind when she set up a tea cart, designed to evoke the pushcarts that once crowded the neighborhood, in front of the museum shop earlier this summer, and invited passersby to drop inside.

While chatting in the handmade copper cart two weeks ago on the exhibit's opening night, Brody and I sipped, in keeping with an ancient Argentinian tradition, a ceramic bowl of Yerba Maté from a single straw. On display were two intricate Moroccan glasses, mugs of all shapes and sizes, and a pair of floral china cups passed down from Brody's grandmother, a descendant of Eastern European immigrants who took classes at the Henry Street Settlement here on the Lower East Side. (Brody herself grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey).

Local cafes donated the tea leaves, and visitors (including a European tourist and a New York native who moved to Vietnam over a decade ago to run a business) supplied the stories that Brody will eventually transcribe onto tea-soaked paper bags and hang in the windows of 97 Orchard.

Come share your stories with Brody tonight from 4-7 pm outside 108 Orchard Street.

L. to r: Green tea, rooibos, and masala chai, a spicy South Asian tea

-posted by Liana Grey

Tea Cart Stories

Last Thursday, artist Michele Brody took to the streets with her tea cart. After being rained out the past two Thursdays, we were really excited to finally start on this public art project.

Michele invited passerby into her cart, made of copper pipes and the Museum's early 20th century pushcart. There they shared a cup of tea and talked about their family stories and connection to the ancient beverage. Michele recorded the stories and plans to transcribe them on the tea bags used to steep tea during their conversations.

You can see some of the stories have already been transcribed and are hanging on the cart. Eventually the entire structure will be covered with fluttering sheets. After July, these papers will hang in the windows of the Tenement Museum for all to read and enjoy.

Come out next Thursday, July 9, or Thursday, July 23 to share your story. Michele will be outside during tea time, 4-7 pm.

All photos by Patricia Tscharskyj.

- Posted by Kate Stober

Green Tea in Golden Gate Park

Artist Michele Brody hasn't opened her tea cart exhibit to the public yet - she's been rained out the past two Thursdays - but the project, in which Michele will transcribe visitors' family histories onto tea-stained paper, has already inspired some storytelling on the internet. Kathleen Goldstein writes on our Flickr page:

Although I'm Irish and was brought up on black tea with milk and a little sugar, my favorite tea memory is the first time I visited San Francisco in 1986 with my husband and my two year old son, Joshua. While dad was working Joshua and I went to the Japenese Tea Garden in the Golden Gate Park. In a traditonal tea hut with open sides I had green tea in a small cup while watching fish swim under the hut in the koi pond and my little son was playing with the pigions [sic] who were looking for the crumbs of the left over almond and rice cookies that are served in a small bowl with each tea order. After my visit to the tea garden I never drank black tea again. My favorite tea is sencha tea and Genmai Cha tea.

Above: Transcribed tea stories from a previous exhibit.

-posted by Liana Grey

Tonight's Tea Cart Stories: Rained Out

We're sorry to tell you that Tea Cart Stories, our interactive art project, is rained out this evening. Come by next week (provided it doesn't rain again, of course!) from 4-7pm to share your tea stories with artist Michele Brody. In the meantime you can check out images from an ESOL workshop she did back in May, as well as see an image of the tea cart itself.

-posted by Kate Stober

A New Art Exhibit in 97 Orchard's Windows

Later this summer, the grave markers in 97 Orchard's street and stoop level windows will be replaced with tea-stained strips of paper recording visitors' family histories. Artist Michele Brody kicked off her project with a group of ESOL students, offering them cups of tea and transcribing their stories onto paper that, steeped in the brown leaves, looked at least a century old. Starting tonight, passersby are welcome to drop by Brody's handmade cart (pictured below, while it was still a work in progress), which will be parked on the sidewalk near the museum. Rain date: Next Thursday.

-posted by Liana Grey