Though you may not know Jessica Crowe’s name, if you are a regular reader of Cuisine you will have seen her work many times. As a stylist, it’s her job to design the look and visual presence of a food feature, selecting accessories and props – everything from plates, glassware and cutlery, to textiles, decorative items, backdrops and artwork – and pulling them all together into a visually compelling story that conveys a specific aesthetic. As important and multi-faceted as this is, the food must always be the focus.

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The creative process begins in consultation with Cuisine’s Art Director Fiona Lascelles who conveys the details of the feature but then, as a long time Cuisine collaborator, much can be left to Jess’ interpretation. Take the recent ‘Comfort Class’ feature in Cuisine issue 229. With a pointer of ‘French comfort’, Jess’ artistic thought processes began to make a mood board, pulling strands from art history, her network of creative contacts and her own work, stringing together ideas which morphed into the styling set up you see on the page. “I had been thinking about the artist Agnes Martin and wanting to create a background for something that had very thoughtful, repetitive lines,” Jess says. “So I created a backdrop with the idea of repetition but did brushstrokes in the style of Matisse. I was also thinking about Breton stripes and so went with this theme of blue with white for the backdrop. This also made me think of Acme’s range of plates. Courtney Petley had also just released a new range and, as she was playing with block inserts, I thought it was a nice link to stripes and brushstrokes.”

As a creative, often Jess is not so much ‘behind the scenes’ as creating the scenes, painting the backdrop mentioned above, collaborating with ceramicists Morning Memories and DJP Ceramics to make the ceramics for the feature on page 80. Issue 228 featured Jess’ Block Shrines body of work, in which she takes flowers, vegetables, fruit and foliage found on rambles in the local reserve or in her Whangamatā garden, and stacks and shapes them into graceful, informal sheaves, turning humble onions, marrows, daisies and cornflowers into elegant still-life tabletop masterpieces. @blockshrines, jessicacrowe.com TRACY WHITMEY