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Geometric red triangle symbol beside a single vertical slash against black space. This symbol represents Trans Learn Tings as transition, rupture, self-definition, nonlinear becoming, and frameworks for learning beyond imposed systems.
Bright green spiral snail with textured shell and soft glowing body resting against a pale background. This symbol represents Mbegu ya Ardhi, “Seed of the Earth” in Swahili, as the Bespokecurry blog space for slow growth, grounded learning, observation, embodied writing, and ideas unfolding over time through lived experience.
Deep maroon fish with green and coral red markings, facing forward like a small signal moving through water. This symbol represents The Knewsletter as recurring messages, updates, and living transmissions from the Bespokecurry cosmos.
Blue and green shell-slug form with ridged texture and a soft glowing outline. This symbol represents the Embodiment Diagram as structure, sensation, regulation, and inner movement held inside the body.
Multicolored school of small fish moving together in layered rows. This symbol represents the Members Area through collective movement, shared direction, community rhythm, and many bodies traveling through the same current.

Bespokecurry Cosmos

Circular bracelet made of glowing multicolored cowrie shells and translucent beads arranged in a continuous loop. The bracelet represents adornment, material culture, ancestral connection, object-based storytelling, and wearable archives within Bead & Cowrie.
Green and red jellyfish with long trailing tendrils and a glowing outline. This symbol represents the Wata(ring) W(hole) through flow, depth, unseen systems, drift, sting, and water memory.
Yellow and red octopus with curling arms and textured detail. This symbol represents About Kiing Curry through intelligence, multiplicity, self-awareness, creative reach, and many forms moving from one body.
Circular afro-like form paired with flowing water lines in magenta, green, and violet tones. This symbol represents the Afroscape Field Guide as embodied Black knowledge, Afro theory, hair and body systems, texture, atmosphere, and living archives of the self.
Claymation-style Black scuba diver with bright orange curls floating underwater in colorful diving gear with bubbles rising beside them. This symbol represents the Bespokecurry Cosmos paid subscription space as deep exploration, immersive learning, protected creative worlds, and guided movement through the layered waters of embodiment, theory, art, and transformation.
Green and violet Wata(ring) Homie with pointed braids radiating like a sunburst, serving as a navigation button to The Afro ABCs page.
Three flowing wave lines in layered blue and green gradients floating against black space. This symbol represents the Six Waters and The Wata(ring) Whole as movement, emotional drift, embodiment, atmospheric flow, and interconnected states of being across the Bespokecurry cosmos.
Small multicolored fish moving together in layered schools across open space. This symbol represents The Tings as interconnected categories, moving parts, collective knowledge systems, and many small ideas traveling together through the Bespokecurry waters.
Three deep red African masks grouped closely together with carved facial markings and elongated forms. This symbol represents the Bespokecurry Cosmos as multiplicity, ancestral signal, layered identities, collective memory, and interconnected creative worlds.
Flowing water lines beside a radiant starburst partially surrounded by a soft blue cloud form. This symbol represents the Terpene Index as aromatic atmosphere, sensory mapping, vapor, plant chemistry, and environmental mood systems moving through the body.
Deep red seahorse with curled tail and textured body floating in open space. This symbol represents the Bespokebook Portfolio as curated creative work, intentional display, archival storytelling, and carefully held artistic worlds.
Deep maroon and chocolate stingray with a long tail and glowing gold texture. This symbol represents BlaxkCurry Productions through grounded movement, quiet power, deep knowledge, and gliding creative force
Flowing water lines beside a dark radiant starburst with grounding bar beneath it in earthy brown and green tones. This symbol represents Fungi Tings as layered ingestion, underground transformation, decomposition, fungal intelligence, and deep internal processing beneath the surface.
Bright green and deep red crab with raised claws and wide stance floating against black space. This symbol represents The Lab as sideways thinking, testing systems, experimentation, structural disruption, and unconventional pathways of knowledge.
Deep maroon and chocolate stingray with a long tail and glowing gold texture. This symbol represents BlaxkCurry Productions through grounded movement, quiet power, deep knowledge, and gliding creative force
Bright orange cephalopod with curling tentacles and glowing blue edges floating against black space. This symbol represents Litm(us) and Black Beauty School as transformation through chemistry, fluid identity, Black beauty knowledge, body experimentation, texture, color theory, and the constant reshaping of self through creative practice and embodiment.
Three flowing wave lines beside a radiant starburst symbol in purple and blue gradients. This symbol represents Six Waters Cannabis Field Notes as ingestion, altered sensing, embodiment, atmospheric expansion, and cannabis moving through the waters of the body.
Small green and deep red sea snail-like organism with a large eye and soft rounded body. This symbol represents The Exploration as wandering, adaptive learning, curiosity, experimentation, and movement through unknown waters.

✺ The Plate Is Never Alone

It is styling the possibility of being there


https://video.wixstatic.com/video/23e724_9d1e6dffd79d4f308139325b4fe0795f/720p/mp4/file.mp4
The plate is never alone. Food, nourishment, creative direction and daily ritual enter the frame together.

Food, Nourishment, Creative Direction & Daily Ritual


I Eat Tings centers nourishment as a daily spiritual practice and food as creative material—how what we ingest shapes mood, memory, energy, imagination, and capacity.


Here, cooking, African diasporic foodways, styling, photography, bodies, and environments meet. The plate is not a prop; it is part of an entire sensory and visual world. The food, creative director, model, and photographer build an image you can see yourself eating within.


This is a grounded approach to feeding the body and directing the frame with care, rhythm, vibrancy, and relationship—not perfection.


Eating here is not discipline, and beauty is not decoration. Both are devotion.


✺ The Plate Is Never Alone


Overhead photograph of jerk-style glazed chicken and fried plantains on a banana-leaf-lined at Riddim n Spice in Nashville 2020. A metal tray with rice, cucumber salad and a yellow drink. Beside it, Kiing Curry’s hands frame a colorful grain bowl topped with corn, tomatoes, cheese and red onion.
Before the first bite, the plate has already made its pitch. (Riddim N Spice - Nashville 2020 just before lockdown)

Styling appetite through Mycelial Sankofa and the third


It is styling the possibility of being there


Styling a plate is never only about the plate.



Overhead photograph of Kiing Curry seated at a white Riddim N Spice restaurant table, reaching toward a colorful grain bowl beside a shared tray of glazed chicken, plantains, rice and cucumber salad. Two yellow drinks and black forks complete the table setting.
 A well-styled table does not fill space. It directs appetite.

There is the plate and the person preparing to eat.


But relationship produces a third:


the feeling moving between them.


Appetite.

Curiosity.

Memory.

Anticipation.


Then the network keeps growing.


The plate + the person + the business hoping they return.


The plate + the person + another patron watching from the next table, using somebody else’s meal to decide what they will order.


The plate + the camera + the person who has not entered the restaurant yet, but is already imagining themself there.


The plate + the creative director + the model + the photographer, building a world that you can imagine yourself eating within.


Full-body portrait of Kiing Curry laughing while holding a yellow drink in front of a turquoise, white and yellow geometric brick mural. Their cropped cartoon sweatshirt echoes the yellow wall behind them.
The meal became a mood—and the business became somewhere you could imagine yourself being.

A plate is a recommendation before it becomes a meal.



Overhead photograph looking past Kiing Curry’s black-and-yellow cropped sweatshirt toward a white table holding a colorful grain bowl, a tray of glazed chicken and plantains, rice, cucumber salad and two yellow drinks. Kiing holds a drink in one hand and a fork in the other.
 The plate is never alone. Neither is the decision to order it.

Through Mycelial Sankofa, I understand creative direction as this kind of living network. Nothing inside an image exists alone. The banana leaf changes the metal tray. The white tabletop intensifies the food’s color. The orange drink travels into the yellow wall, the cropped sweatshirt and the warmth of the plantains. Hands introduce scale, gesture and the pleasure of reaching. The body carries the meal beyond the table and into the architecture surrounding the business.


This is what I mean by developing the third. I am not simply styling food or placing a person beside it. I am building the relationship through which each becomes more visible.



Because the image is never just selling the plate.


It is styling the possibility of being there.


Kiing Curry stands in front of a bright yellow and turquoise painted brick wall, holding a yellow drink and making a playful expression. They wear blue jeans and a cropped black sweatshirt featuring a large yellow cartoon duck face.
The drink left the table and found the rest of its color story.

✺ The Plate Is Never Alone


Cosmos Watershed


Food styling is not the arrangement of isolated objects. It is the creative direction of relationships: between food and body, image and appetite, business and patron, and the world being photographed and the person invited to imagine themself inside it.


◉ At the Table

The meal is presented as an ecosystem: food, drink, hands, color, surface, appetite and the people gathered around it. What appears on the table becomes part of how the restaurant itself is remembered.


The Tongue Ritual





Before tasting the food, notice what the image has already allowed you to taste.









Watershed Coordinates


Coordinate

Placement

Primary Ting

✺ I Eat Tings

Connected Ting

◉⌁ I See Tings

Water

Flowing Water

Embodiment

Integration

Practice

Creative Direction

Framework

Mycelial Sankofa

Relational movement

Cultivating the Third

Cosmos Constellations


Constellation

Relationship to the essay

Mycelial Sankofa

Reveals the image as a network of relationships rather than a collection of isolated objects.

Cultivating the Third

Names what emerges between the plate, body, business, image-maker and viewer.

Food as Embodiment

Treats appetite, gesture and eating as bodily ways of entering an image.

Creative Direction

Coordinates food, color, clothing, architecture and performance into one world.


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