Everyday Intention

In the middle of a pollo asado brunch at a Guatemalan joint, Rachel Minick drops this gem: “Ritual keeps the scope of what can happen during an event scaled down.” She’s referring to chaos, and the trope goes as far back as all the “gods vs. chaos monsters” struggles of the earliest religious epics. She says it in a way so you know she’s thought about it, practiced it, applied it — and speaking as someone who worked in professional religious circles for more than a decade, it took me a second to realize this 20-something just dropped a deeply profound insight that provided connective tissue to what I did as a pastor for 14 years.

Ritual often finds its home in religion, but it’s not confined there, and a shared meal is one of the places we tend to find it outside of faith traditions. Minick has worked for star OKC restaurant Nonesuch in various capacities since graduating OSU in 2023, so she’s seen how ritual plays out in the components of a dinner service. But it was COVID that ritualized her life, after she’d left behind the rote practices of her Christian upbringing. 

“During the lockdown, I had to make a ritual of daily activities to get through the days,” she says. “I had to force myself to do simple things so I wouldn’t lie in bed all day, and when I started at Nonesuch, I could see how ritualized their service is.” 

Minick’s passions are hospitality-related but restaurant-adjacent. She is a creative first, and this is a story about art, not food, but it’s hard to find a clear point of demarcation between art and food when creatives get involved. Seemingly without intending to, she’s creating an art scene in Oklahoma City, a place that has long trailed behind our sister city Tulsa in realizing a transformative art scene. 

Minick has staged events in both cities, and it was in Tulsa where she had put together a dinner for artist Rebekah Danae that she realized her services were going to need something a little extra: “I realized I needed to get my **** together,” she says. “When I saw what she wanted for the dinner, I realized I needed a team.” 

That team looks like Minick’s social circle: young women and gay men. “I’ve worked with men in hospitality and other areas, and I don’t like the way they talk to and interact with each other. It doesn’t have to be that way.” 

Her first dinner was a bunch of friends, and no team was required. The potluck style de-emphasized the food, focusing instead on the friendships, conversations and experience of being together.

“I like to put 12 people in a room [for] a meal and then they have to talk to each other. You can’t avoid the conversations.” –Rachel Minick

“I’m a spiritual person,” Minick says. “I lean toward Buddhism, but I find meaning in many traditions — and for me, being intentional about time with friends is a holy act. The difference between ritual and rote is mindfulness, and so intentionality is at the core of what we do; that and love.”

Her creative partner in the photoshoots that are the face of Minick’s projects is Logan Peltier, a stylist and model who helps Minick with what she calls “avant garde projects.” The most recent was a collaboration with Myranda Bahr at Goodwill. All the models were in thrifted clothing. Each of the photoshoots happens under the banner of “Suburbia.” 

“Suburbia is essentially a model workshop,” Minick says. “We do one or two a year, and they’re themed. Previous one were ‘The Workout Tapes’ and ‘A Social Affair.’” 

The models are able to use the photos for their own portfolios, and Minick and Peltier get the satisfaction of creating clever and insightful art, flexing their creative muscles and providing training for young models to work in a professional setting. All of the shoots feature Minick’s talents as a photographer, a pursuit that began when her father bought a camera when she was 13.

“I just took it, and started taking pictures,” she says. “I made family and friends dress in coordinated outfits, stage scenes and go to random places for backdrops.”

She started to study architecture, but COVID redirected her toward other creative pursuits, and the graphic design and fashion that were part of her merchandising degree have been very useful in Suburbia. If it’s possible to divide our lives into work and play, or work and art, then Suburbia is the work and the dinners are the play, and the latter seem to bring out a more fleshed out, more emergent form of Minick. 

We’re finishing brunch, and she says of the dinners: “I like to put 12 people in a room at a meal and then they have to talk to each other. You can’t avoid the conversations.”She has mentioned a meal; the numbers 4 and 12; and love as she tells the story, and I point out that she’s used Biblical imagery and numerology throughout: eucharist, 4 Gospels, 12 disciples, a meal in John 13. She is surprised, but acknowledges that the archetypes live in our heads even after we reject the framework, and they shape the way we view and navigate the world, friendship, work and love. Her ability to accept all of who she is and all of what’s happened so far makes for very good art.