Cartier & Cherries, Tier ①

- 12 x 10 inches
- Edition of 20
- Fine art giclee print
- Hand-numbered and embossed with the studio stamp
- Hand-torn deckled edge

Developing these pieces in far away hazy and sun-strewn places, I’m continuously attempting to bring a pace, a grain, and a sensuality to my work. I’d played the matches game, but I’ve grown up, not out of matches per se but I graduated to collecting lighters. First, a camel bone heavy-handed lighter case with hand-molded edges from the Atlas Mountains to then this Cartier piece, even heavier but slimmer to the hand and sleeker in the packaging. Have I mentioned I love a presentational packaging moment? Of course. 

Found and acquired in the chaotic streets of Nice in late July. The cherries were added later that afternoon, as we stopped roadside on our route back from the hot city to our cliffside home further down the Côte d'Azur, we picked up a box of, to say crudely but accurately, goddamn beautiful cherries, no one can be above their magnificence even just in the visual, never mind the firm wet taste and blood-like stain that coats your lips.
Seductive, I can’t help but see them as. The same way you might see one being fed to a lover in a 1950s French nouveau film. More likely, more often, the film would be filled with lighting, smoking, sharing, and blowing cigarettes and smoke. French mouth pleasure, for our entertainment, for our education. Suggestive and not showing everything, this is my romance film, in a still, in a drawing, part of a collection to honor a culture I know very little about other than living in it for a while.