Eric Steen

Art & Beer: The Drunken Cobbler

2014-06-27T14:00:00.004-07:00

June 2014 / I invited five Portland breweries to make beer inspired by a painting at the Portland Art Museum. The five breweries were Widmer Brothers, Breakside Brewery, Ecliptic Brewing, Humble Brewing, and Laurelwood Brewing. I'll post additional information soon, but wanted to make sure this video was up and available to the public so you could see the process. We served the beer to a sold-out crowd in the Museum's Grand Ballroom. Each brewer spoke out about how they took inspiration from the painting for their beer, the curator spoke about the painting and artist, the conservator talked about the conservation efforts of the museum, and the brewer from Widmer spoke about wild yeast and bacteria. Each visitor received a pour of each beer and specially printed glassware.

The Drunken Cobber by Jean-Baptiste Greuze

A few more images from the process and final event:

From Instagram

Feature in Outside Magazine

2014-05-12T09:30:00.001-07:00

April 2014 ///
Beers Made By Walking is featured in an article called "Strange Brews" by Tyler Moss in the April 2014 print issue of Outside Magazine. The theme of the article is on the growing trend of foraged beers. The article is also available to read online here.

Participating in the 2014 Food Book Fair in Brooklyn

2014-03-21T15:46:00.003-07:00

March 2013 ///
I have been invited to create a pop-up pub for the Food Book Fair in Brooklyn at the end of April. I am working with over twenty-five NYC based homebrewers to create beverages inspired by the neighborhood around the Wythe Hotel, which is where the Food Book Fair will take place. I'm really happy to be participating in an event that incorporates food from such an expansive platform.

The event is on April 27th, there is a session at 2pm and a session at 6pm. Tickets to the event are available here.

More information about the Food Book Fair:

The Third Annual Food Book Fair will bring together food enthusiasts, chefs, artists, writers, designers and publishers to celebrate the intersection between food culture and our food system. 2014 will feature 3 Days, 200+ Books, 60 Visionaries, 25 Foodieodicals, 9 Panel Discussions, 1 Film Screening, 1 Brew Pub, 1 Pop-Up Farm, 1 Tasting Event, 1 Resource Fair and an Epic Pitch Competition!

Beers Made By Walking (2013)

2014-03-21T15:00:00.003-07:00

The Beers Made By Walking program has continued to expand and morph with each passing summer season. The program invites brewers to go on nature hikes and make new beer inspired by edible plants found along the trail.

In 2013, the program invited more breweries in Colorado and Oregon than ever before - twenty seven in all. We had a special festival in Denver at Wynkoop Brewing during the Great American Beer Festival where the beers were served to the public. We also served the Oregon beers in Portland and Eugene, OR at smaller beer-centric bars. Each event served as a fundraiser for a local environmental non-profits that focus on bringing people outdoors for educational events.

We published a series of articles that featured the hikes from many of the brewers. The articles show pictures from the hikes, some educational information about the area and flora, and descriptions of how the brewers made the decisions for their beers. You can see those articles here and here.

The program received a lot of attention this year. We had write ups in NPR, Oregon Public Broadcast, Draft Magazine, All About Beer Magazine, and many others.

Finally, this year the program began a partnership with the Forest Park Conservancy. They led a number of educational walks in Forest Park, the largest in-city park in the country. We also conducted experiments in the forest to collect yeast from old-growth portions of the forest and in the second growth portions. At some point in the near future a beer will be fermented with these yeast strains.

Here are a few select photos from this year's programming. For more information you can visit beersmadebywalking.com.

Pouring unfermented wort (beer) into a bucket to collect wild yeast strains. This hike took place in Forest Park with the brewer from Thunder Island Brewing. The beer will be available sometime during the 2014 program.

The brewers at Elevation Beer Co. in Poncha Springs, CO found red currant on their trail and included them in their beer. Other breweries chose from a range of ingredients including Porcini mushrooms, spruce tips, dandelion, milk thistle, mint, yarrow, heather flowers, cedar tips, and many others.

In Portland, we led an urban walk with the National College of Natural Medicine as part of the Open Engagement conference at Portland State University. We looked at plants growing in sidewalk cracks, median strips, and vacant lots. Coalition Brewing and Upright Brewing tagged along and made beer with rosemary, mint, and elderflower.

An image from a hike with Claim 52 Brewing, near Eugene, OR. Their beer included huckleberry and porcini mushroom salt.

An image from the walk with New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, CO.

Photo by Daniel Flanders

The two last photos were taken at the BMBW Festival, at Wynkoop Brewing in Denver, during the Great American Beer Festival. We printed glassware and published a sixteen page menu for the event. About 200 visitors were served beer that was inspired by trails all over the state of Colorado.

All About Beer Magazine publishes my work in article about art and beer

2014-02-04T14:14:00.002-08:00

February 2014 ///
A couple of my creative projects, Beers Made By Walking and Art & Beer, are featured in the printed March issue of All About Beer Magazine. The article, "Creating Masterpieces," was written by Don Tse and looks at ways that the arts and craft beer are coming together in new and exciting ways.

...there has been a remarkable surge recently in breweries discovering that they fit within the tapestry of the various arts. The collegial and supportive brewing community is now simply spreading its support to forms of art beyond the art they already brew.

The article talks about the McMenamin's Brewpubs, Gigantic Brewing's bottles and mural project, and a number of art related beer events. My work features a prominent role in the article, as does a friendly photo of myself and an image from one of my Art & Beer events.

You can download and read the whole article here.

Works on display in the Walking Encyclopaedia exhibition at AIrSpace Gallery

2014-01-24T20:02:00.000-08:00

Jan. 2014 ///
Six menu/catalogs that I have created for Beers Made By Walking will be included in The Walking Encyclopaedia, at Airspace Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, England. The exhibition includes documentation and participatory works from artists that employ walking as part of their craft, in it's various forms.

More details on the exhibition:

A brief look through Roget’s Thesaurus offers us a sense that a walk can be many things. It could be a stroll, a saunter, a hike or a ramble. For those with time to spare it might be a promenade or a perambulation or if the mood has taken a turn for the worse, the walk could turn into a traipse or a trudge. The political walker might consider a march or a parade, whilst the pilgrimage or the crusade would be more pertinent for the spiritual.

Walking as a cultural activity stretches from the 18th century philosophy of Rousseau, who famously “thought with his legs”, encompassing the Parisian flaneurs and the psychogeography which sprang from the Situationists and which still endures today. The conceptual walking of Richard Long and Hamish Fulton brought the artistry of the act into the Gallery and the consciousness of the art theorists to the point that today; the act of walking and the walking artist are at the forefront of contemporary art.

AirSpace Gallery has noticed the recent surge in popularity of walking as a cultural activity, and the validation afforded it by the Art World. In collaboration with The Walking Artists Network, The Walking Encyclopaedia seeks to present an overview, or a survey, of walking as a contemporary cultural activity.

Interview with Duplex Collective

2013-12-16T11:08:00.000-08:00

Dec. 2013 /
The folks at Duplex Collective, a gallery based in NW Portland, Oregon, interviewed me while we walked to Maya Lin's Bird Blind. We talked about how my teaching philosophy, a number of my recent projects, and a few of my student's projects as well. Check out the whole interview here.

Beers Made By Walking featured on NPR Food Blog

2013-11-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

Nov. 2013 /
Beers Made By Walking was featured on the NPR Food Blog in an article titled "Forget Barley And Hops: Craft Brewers Want A Taste Of Place" by Alistair Bland. The article highlights breweries that forage for ingredients, and they include information about my program, and some quotes from an interview.

Read the whole article here.

Neighborhood Goods

2013-08-29T16:08:00.000-07:00

Summer 2013 /
Over the summer I moved back to Oregon and to re-familiarize myself with the area I began walking all over the city. During these walks I was overjoyed by the amount of fruit trees, berry bushes, and edible plants growing in people's yards. As the summer progressed, it became clear that not all the fruit would be used, so I handwrote cards to my neighbors and asked them if I could pick the fruit. In return I would give them some of what I made.

I heard back from nine of the ten neighbors, all of them saying I could pick the fruit in their yards. I've been collecting loads of plums, apples, pears, figs, hops, and berries. I'm in the process of making beer, cider, jam, and other goods.

Originally this was not meant to be a project, but in some ways it has become one. Most of the walks, and the brewing has been done with friend and artist Travis Souza. I'll update soon with more photos and information.

Homebrewed By Design

2013-08-08T18:07:00.000-07:00

2013 /
Home Brewed by Design is a program that pairs 20 homebrewers with 20 independent graphic designers in Portland. The brewers make a tasty brew and the designers create labels for the bottles. The labels are professionally printed at Rose City Label. I co-organized the program with designer, Jason Sturgill. The result was a special event where the beers and labels were revealed to the public during Design Week Portland.

Beers Made By Walking in Beer West Magazine!

2013-06-19T13:05:00.003-07:00

June 2013 /
The in-print Summer 2013 Beer West Magazine features an article about connecting beer to the environment, or outdoors, in some capacity. Beers Made By Walking is talked about, at length, along with Hikes and Pints and other organizations. You can download and read the article here.

More information about Beer West:
Since 2007 Beer Northwest has grown to become the leading beer culture and lifestyle magazine in the Northwest and in January 2011, the magazine expanded into California and became Beer West. With the expansion, we are continuing to bring new readers into the thriving West Coast beer market, and with it also comes fresh design concepts, innovative stories, and even more of the compelling beer lifestyle content that’s been connecting so well with thousands of readers for the past four years.

The only regional publication of its kind, Beer West has more than doubled its circulation and visibility in the past year, and with a focused readership of 80,000 beer and food enthusiasts in the West and beyond, it’s the perfect medium for your message. From the surfing towns and hoppy IPAs of Southern California to the snow-capped mountains and barrel-aged sours of Oregon and Washington, Beer West is a celebration of the unique Western beer-loving life.

Beers Made By Walking editorial on Oregon Public Broadcast

2013-06-17T16:11:00.000-07:00

June 2013 /
Cassandra Profita, from Oregon Public Broadcast's Ecotrope series, recently joined us on a hike for Beers Made By Walking and wrote an editorial titled "Forest Park Trail Inspires Local Beer Made With Native Plants." The article features information about the Portland set of hikes, the history of the program, information about Forest Park, and a sampling of the beers that were available for Portland Beer Week. Check out the full article here.

Beers Made By Walking will be part of Open Engagement 2013

2013-05-13T10:34:00.001-07:00

May 2013 /
I have been invited to organize one of my Beers Made By Walking walks for the 2013 Open Engagement conference in Portland, OR. The walk will be our first public urban walk. It will start on May 18th at 5pm at 2724 SE Ankeny. We will cover about 2 miles in 1.5 hours and we will identify edible and medicinal plants growing in parks, parking lots, medians, and in front yards. The brewers from Coalition and Upright will be with us, and sometime this summer they will make new beers inspired by what we identify. The beers will be served at a special tapping in Portland in October, details will be listed, in time, at beersmadebywalking.com.

More details on Open Engagement 2013 program:

Open Engagement is an international conference that sets out to explore various perspectives on art and social practice and expand the dialogue around socially engaged art making. The Open Engagement conference is an initiative of Portland State University’s Art and Social Practice MFA concentration. Directed and founded by Jen Delos Reyes and planned in conjunction with the Art and Social Practice students, this year’s conference features keynote presenters Claire Doherty, Tom Finkelpearl, and Michael Rakowitz.

Awarded Outstanding Instructor at UCCS

2013-05-13T10:26:00.002-07:00

May 2013 /
I am happy to announce that last month I was awarded Outstanding Instructor of the year in the Letters, Arts & Sciences college at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. The prestigious award was given to only two instructors out of a total of twenty departments in the college. The award was based on recommendations from colleagues, students, and after class-visits from committee members.

Alum - Exhibition of work at Autzen Gallery in Portland

2013-05-12T13:40:00.001-07:00

May 2013 /
I am very pleased to be a part of a show titled "Alum" at the Autzen Gallery in Portland, Oregon. The show will only be up for a few days, but it is quite special to me. Nine alumni from the Portland State University Art & Social Practice group will each display current or past work, showcasing some of the things we've been up to since graduation.

I have sent seven posters that I designed for Focus on the Beer, a website that I created after moving to Colorado Springs. Over the course of two and a half years I have made over 500 entries on the blog and I have organized nearly 20 different local beer events with the intent of education and building community around craft beer in my city. For each event I designed a poster. You can see all the posters, digitally, here. The ones I selected for the show include: Deschutes Tap Takeover, Twisted Pine Meet the Brewer, Beers Made By Walking Denver, Crabtree Meet the Brewer, Battle of the Brewers Round 1, Crooked Stave Meet the Brewer, and a hand-drawn Anniversary Party Poster.

Here's an image of one of the posters:

Three Events for PDX Beer Week

2013-03-03T13:33:00.000-08:00

March 2013 /
I am working with Belmont Station to organize two events for PDX Beer Week, and I am organizing an additional one on my own. I am planning a public walk through Forest Park with four breweries - Breakside, Coalition, Commons, and Hopworks. The public will get to meet some people from the brewery, identify edible plants and learn directly about the beers that each brewery made. The other two events are special tappings at Belmont Station. I will tap the four beers from the four breweries listed above, and I am also coordinating a Colorado Beer Tapping. Dates are not yet finalized.

Pub School written up in the Scotland Herald

2013-02-19T13:02:00.000-08:00

February 2013 /
Pub School, my pop-up pub project in Glasgow was mentioned in the Scotland Herald during an interview with Jake Griffin, now-brewer at Fyne Ales. Jake mentions my project as one of the major influences for how he got a start in the brewing industry and the article goes on to talk all about the event. My name is not mentioned, but I'm still really pleased to see that what I organized has had such a lasting impact on so many lives! Robbie Pickering, the director of Glasgow Beer Week, says that my event was the GBW prototype. I'll need to post a statement from him soon too. To see the full article, download the image above or visit The Herald here.

Beers Made By Walking (2012)

2012-11-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

2012 /
The first Beers Made By Walking program was so inspiring that I decided to expand the program this year. To recap BMBW is a program that invites brewers to make beer inspired by nature hikes and urban walks. Each walk is different, each beer is a portrait of that landscape.

This year I worked with sixteen breweries, ten homebrewers, and organized four events in three states - Colorado, Oregon, and Washington. For each event I published a catalog that also served as an informational menu with descriptions of the hikes, the beers, and each brewer's thought processes. Last year I organized the project as part of the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art programming and this year I decided to do the project independently. Below are some recaps of the four events and some of the hikes. You can also see more information at beersmadebywalking.com.

Oregon

The public hike through the Whychus Canyon Preserve with Deschutes Brewery

In Oregon I worked with five breweries in distinct parts of the state. Deschutes Brewery is in Bend and their hike was through the Whychus Canyon Preserve. Their beer raised a couple thousand dollars for the Deschutes Land Trust. Standing Stone in Ashland hike Grizzly Peak. Flat Tail in Corvallis walked along the waterfront area in town. Upright and Coalition are both in Portland. Coalition's hike was through Forest Park, the largest in-city park in the county. Upright's hike was in the Mount Hood National Forest.

The beers were served at Belmont Station in Portland on October 22nd. The beers were:
Coalition Brewing - Ale with Stinging Nettles and Salmonberry
Deschutes Brewery - IPA with Juniper and Sage
Flat Tail Brewing - Fresh Hop Cherry Saison with Corvallis Cherries and Yarrow
Standing Stone Brewery - Ale with Sweet Root, and Wild Ginger
Upright Brewing - Saison with Yarrow and Rose

Coalition Brewing's hike was through Forest Park in Portland

Salmon Berries

Washington

Our camping spot in Carnation, WA during The Long Walk

I was invited to do a Beers Made By Walking as part of Susan Robb's expansive project The Long Walk Seattle. A group of about 60 people walked 45+ miles on the King County Regional Trail System over three days from Seattle to Snoqualmie. I worked with Snoqualmie Brewery to create a beer with ingredients from a walk around a park in Carnation, WA, which was one of the overnight stops along The Long Walk. The beer ended up being a Stinging Nettle Ale and was served while we at the park.

Colorado (Denver)

I invited ten breweries across the state of Colorado to go on nature hikes and make beer inspired by the landscape of Colorado. The beers were served during the Great American Beer Festival at Wynkoop Brewing in Denver, one of the main drinking destinations of the week. Visitors from all over the country were able to these local-minded beers. The brewers ranged from brand-new small breweries to more established large breweries.

A list of the beers for the event:

Crooked Stave - Foragester Sai-bucha - A blend of three beers with jasmine kombucha tea, linen flowers, and wild grapes.
Oskar Blues - Opuntia Zytha - Our brew is a Golden Ale made with prickly pear cactus and fresh hops picked out of Charlie Papazian's yard.
Lone Tree - High Plains Harvest Brown - Brown Ale with whiskey soaked pumpkin seeds and orange blossom honey.
Phantom Canyon - Sundance Saison - A balanced and clean Saison made with rose hips and sumac.
Pikes Peak - Dances with Bees - Inspired by a hike to Palmer Lake Reservoir, a golden honey ale with sunflower seeds.
Pikes Peak - Kriekenstein - A 4% sour mash Kriek with chokecherry.
Ska Brewing - Cerveza de las Animas Perdidas - A dry and fruity Saison spiced with juniper, yarrow, and chokecherries, inspired by the Animas River in Durango.
Strange - Eldorado Bel-Gin Dark - Brewed with juniper berries and pineapple weed this Belgian Dark Ale is the color of the canyon walls along Eldorado Creek.
Trinity - Saison Du Tomme - Light bodied Saison with rose hips and amaranth from the hike, also added is lemongrass and grains of paradise.
Wynkoop - Oishi Gochiso - A light lager made with pacific rim hops and a blend of spices and tea inspired by our urban walk.

Colorado (Colorado Springs)

Some of the walkers at Palmer Lake Reservoir

A text from the BMBW website reads:

This summer we invited eight groups of local homebrewers to join us on a public hike. We walked the Palmer Lake Reservoir Trail, identifying edible and medicinal plants along the way. Each group came up with an exciting and innovative recipe, using ingredients that are non-traditional in contemporary brewing practices. The beers were produced at Pikes Peak Brewing and will be available at the brewery for one day only.

Four of the beers during the tasting event at Pikes Peak Brewing in Monument, CO.

We hosted about 25 people on our public hike and the beers were served in early September. A couple of the beers were selected to be rebrewed on a larger scale at local breweries and were served at the Denver event as well. Here is a list of the beers and the brewers:

Bryan Paradisi and Oren Weil
Professor Plum / Brandy Oak Plum Porter

Carol White and Zenia Brink
Rosie's Wild Hips and Hops / Belgian Pale Ale with Rose Hips, Clover Honey and Wild Hops

John Landreman
Sundance Saison / Saison with Rose Hips and Sumac

Josh Adamski
Maple Ryetious Pale Ale / Maple Rye Pale Ale

Mike Bordick
Palmer Special Ale / Belgian Rye Brown with Maple and Juniper

Mike "Lefty" McGuckian
Dances With Bees / Cream Ale with Sunflower and Wildflower Honey

Scott Simmons
Kreikenstein / Sour Stein Kreik with Chokecherry

Scott Werner
Gose of Summer's Past / German Gose with Bee Balm and Sumac

A Walk to Pikes Peak

2012-10-31T15:31:00.003-07:00

2012 /
Commissioned by the Art History Program at UCCS and the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art, Harrell Fletcher and I lead a group of roving learners from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs to the top of Pikes Peak. The journey took three days, students and members of the community tagged along when they could and left as they needed to. A small group of nine people were able to accomplish the entire walk. We camped overnight at a house near Manitou Springs and at the Barr Camp on the mountain. Along the way each member of the walk contributed a short lecture or presentation that related to the places we walked through. The project was co-organized by my "Walking, Art, and Place" class, offered through the Visual and Performing Arts and Geography departments at UCCS.

Interview with Christian Ettinger of Hopworks Published in Mobile Phenomena

2012-10-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

October 2012 /
An interview I conducted with Christian Ettinger, owner of Hopworks Urban Brewery, was published in the book Mobile Phenomena, published by Temporary Services through Half Letter Press. The interview is about the sustainability initiatives behind the Hopworks business and their dedication to bike culture, specifically the bar-bike they built for the brewery.

More information about the book:
Mobile Phenomena is a new collection of over eighty-five photographs and two interviews. It is the result of years of research on common instances of mobile phenomena that impact people and their uses of shared city and rural spaces. In this book you will find bookmobiles, mobile forms of commerce, inventive mobile art projects, mobile structures created for use during protest, and some strange applications of mobility that defy easy description,categorization, or whose function could not be readily discerned. Mobile Phenomena can unhinge the expected roles we take in shared city spaces. Mobile structures can become a new norm when they work. It is our hope that this book can be an inspiration to other citizens, artists, activists, nomads, and anyone who is interested in escaping the constraints of their location, culture, or other factors that make realizing oneʼs desires difficult.

The books is available for purchase at Half Letter Press.

Write up in Draft Magazine

2012-07-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

July 2012 /
Beers Made By Walking is featured in the latest issue of Draft Magazine, one of the leading magazines for craft beer. The article is titled "These Beers Were Made For Walking" and is located on page 14, check out the digital version of the magazine here. The article comes at a perfect time, as I'm in the middle of organizing BMBW in Oregon, Colorado, and Washington, with events at the end of July and a few in October.

Invitational panelist for the 2012 Beer Bloggers Conference

2012-07-23T13:26:00.000-07:00

July 2012 /
Earlier in the year I was invited to be a panelist at the Beer Bloggers Conference in Indianapolis, IN. The topic of the panel was "Creating A Beer Event" and took place on July 15th. I was on a panel with Matt Leff from Rhizome Productions. I was able to talk about the various events that I organize around the country while giving advice to people who are interested in starting their own, smaller-scale, events.

Beers Made By Walking is Growing

2012-06-05T17:01:00.000-07:00

May 2012 /
Beers Made By Walking has grown quickly over the last year. In 2012, we will have four different variations in three different states. It started last year as a summer long program in Colorado Springs that invited brewers to go on nature walks and make beer inspired by edible plants seen along the trail. Each variation of BMBW is slightly different than the next.

I started a website at beersmadebywalking.com where I will track all things BMBW, keep interested readers informed, post photos from hikes and brew dates, hold information on the various tastings, etc. Go check out the site, click on the links to follow us on facebook and twitter too.

Article About My Work by Bryce Dwyer in Mash Tun

2012-06-05T16:31:00.000-07:00

May 2012 /
Bryce Dwyer wrote another article about my work, titled "Serving Art," for Mash Tun magazine. The article compares and contrasts a few of my projects to Tom Marioni's work The Act of Drinking Beer With Friends is the Highest Form of Art. Some of Bryce's thinking centers on the blurring of art and life. You can download and/or view the article here. I put the article online, hopefully that's not a problem with Mash Tun.

A quote: "Whereas beer is a readymade for Marioni, for Steen it is magic stuff with qualities that open up a broad range of experiences - both from the beer itself and the scene of its consumption."

Mash Tun is a Chicago-based beer journal, it has the feel of well-published zine. It features beer focused writing and scholarship about the history of beer, the art of beer, and articles about topics in the contemporary beer industry. This is the first publication. Here's what they say about themselves and this issue:

Mash Tun is our paean to craft beer. It follows the pleasures and aesthetics of craft beer and how it intersects with food, culture, and society. The Mash Tun comes in the form of a Journal, a Website, a Festival, and a Guide. It features contributions by: Bryce Dwyer Jeriah Hildwine ,Frank Hays Jamie Trecker, Shanna van Volt, Sarah Morton, Kyle Smith, Matthew Mikkelsen, Andy Skelton, Jon Braun, Dan Morgridge, Paul Durica, Samuel and Jesse Edwin Evan, Plural, Erin Drain Mairead Case, Michael McAvena Dan O’Shea, Michael Kiser, and Ed Marszewski.

A Walk to Pikes Peak - Collaboration with Harrell Fletcher

2012-05-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

May 2012 /

The Art History Program at UCCS and the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art commissioned Harrell Fletcher and Eric Steen to lead a group of roving learners from UCCS to the top of Pikes Peak. The journey took three days, students and members of the community tagged along when they could and left as they needed to. A small group were able to accomplish the entire walk. Along the way each member of the walk contributed a short lecture or presentation that related to the places they walked through. The project was organized by the "Walking, Art, and Place" class, offered through the Visual and Performing Arts and Geography departments at UCCS.