I Miss U all my Blog

Yesterday K & S said...you've had the coolest jobs! You ain't seen nothin' Sweetie Darling :)
Paul Bocuse, Champagne Mumm's spokes person,
suggested I do some artwork for them and made introductions.
They gave me a test assignment: Come up with a big group drawing of tons of celebrities drinking Mumm that they could gift to all their employees.
Can you spot Kate Moss? And there's one of the Seagrams brothers embracing the big bottle. Please note everyone is holding their glass by the STEM. Never hold a champagne glass by the "bowl". You must not warm up the bubbles.
That group drawing led to a portrait promotion program. They thought I should paint the portraits directly onto the Mumm bottles?
I foresaw a sea of Mumm jeroboams in my living room. The last minute I dreamed up the idea to print their label design on my watercolor paper and I ended up with just stacks of nice neatly printed Champagne labels.

One of the perks of this career was I got to stay at the Mumm mansion in Reims...
The countryside in Champagne is magnificent and there's a new fast train

from Paris that gets you there in an hour. Don't miss it!
I got to stay a week in Verzy at Veuve Clicquot's country estate.
It was just me and a refrigerator full of jeroboams.
They said, "Help yourself" Right! :)
Someone did pop in to deliver petit dejeuner in the morning and the rest of the time I communed with the grapevines. They still use straw baskets to pick the grapes in Champagne.
There's a lot of partying in the Champagne Biz. These pourers are dressed up as old fashioned "cellar men". They used to turn the resting bottles.
They're fun to sketch...
This is not me embracing the big bottle, that's my French boss at Mumm...
This is me partying at the Chelsea Arts Club Belle Epoche Ball held at London's Albert Hall... Well there is a Champagne bottle in the picture. We had to come as characters from Degas and Lautrec paintings. I chose a Degas dancer. I remember Roger Terry, the club concierge, telling me,
"If you add one more satin bow to that outfit, you'll look like a dog's dinner."
Don't you just love the Brits!

Pass the Bolly Sweetie Darling!

Yesterday I went to see the Paul Poiret fashion exhibit at the Met. It closes Saturday so you better run.

At the exhibit all I could think of was my mother, Isabel...
She always wanted to be a fashion designer. Her family was against it, but she won a scholarship to Moore College of Art in Philadelphia.

I only discovered after she died, that she'd graduated at the top of her class with the best fashion design collection in 10 years! I found an old newspaper clipping she'd never shown me...

She did get to work briefly as an assistent to a reknown Philadelphia hat designer. Part of her duties were chauffeuring him around town. Hmmm...then her parents wanted her to "chauffeur" them out to a hot springs resort in California and she quit her design job - end of her dreams of a design career.
Out there she met my father, they danced and 3 days later he proposed.
My mother designed and made her own bias-cut silk wedding dress.
My mother often used me as a foil. Together we'd go sleuthing in designer shops. She'd try on and secretly examine the inner construction of posh dresses. Then she'd go home and create her own version. We made doll clothes together. Her plan for me was for me to go to design school and complete her dreams of becoming a fashion designer.
Naturally I was having none of it.

My path has been so twisty turny...
I LOVE what I'm doing now - Paris macaron watercolors etc.
But who knows where the road turns next? Did I mention my Mom painted and I still use her old watercolor box?
Mom, I hope I've done you proud.

The next chapter of my varied career path...Butcher, baker, candlestick maker...

As I mentioned before I had nothing to wear to the ball...I mean the chef portrait exhibit opening at the James Beard House.. So I painted a chef's jacket to wear covered with portraits of said chefs!

Here's a back view with my favorite back views of the chefs...
I mentioned also that I wore 4 different jackets to Paul Bocuse award luncheon... Not all at once silly! I rotated them in the ladies room. A tall, dark, thin man came over and said he'd like to order a painted jacket.
asked for his business card. He said he had none. I asked could he write his name on a piece of paper.. And he wrote -

At the same Bocuse event another chef invited me for lunch at his Lyon hotel restaurant.There he served me my first and last whole black Perigord truffle en croute. After I finished his dish and assured him it was wonderful.. (what do I know of truffles, chocolate or otherwise) He informed me, Now you will paint me a chef's jacket. You have just eaten your payment!
Pas de choise / I had no choice..
C'est la vie
Sometimes you just have to pay the piper for your dinner..

I got to know famed French chef, Roger Verge at that luncheon too. He asked me to paint him a special jacket for his upcoming vegetable cookbook tour. Payment would be a stay at his fabulous French Riviera inn, Le Moulin de Mougins. I never got around to tasting that "truffle" and now he's no longer there :(

Wendy Brandes at the Wall Street Journal did a little story on the jackets...
"Michelangelo liked ceilings. Diego Rivera preferred murals. Carol Gillott goes for...chefs jackets."

I never had to worry again what to wear to the ball or any foodie events I was shooting. And I was a walking sandwich board for the jackets. Moms liked the jackets for their graduating culinary school kids. Chefs liked them too for special events. And the chefs were just entering the celebrity arena at that time...

I threw in this back view of the "pasta jacket" of a hilltown for all you returning sojourners from Italy, Merisi and Brit!

Becs said, How did you manage to land all these sweet gigs?

But I didn't know I was laying the groundwork for sketching chefs at fancy dos...
Here's an invitation I did for a benefit party of Julia Child with Great Chefs held at restaurant March.

I proposed to FOOD ARTS MAGAZINE that I do some sketchbook pages for them at the Lyon Food Fair - also known as the Salon des Metiers de Bouche

The French take it so much further than the Fancy Food Show! With real fish mongers, crepe makers, cheese vendors - The WORKS!
I illustrated an invitation for D'Artagnan's big anniversary party at Grand Central station for Ariane Daguin. Sketching the party was part of the fun of photographing and attending these events...
After Paul Bocuse's M.O.F. party,
George Duboeuf gave a bang-up chef soiree... More doodles...
Sketching at the James Beard Awards...

Out of these party sketches I ended up doing a series of ads for Restaurant Associates showing their Tropica chef creating in the kitchen. I went in, taped his conversation and made it part of the ads seen inside New York Magazine too.

Party sketching is a FUN career!