Artist Alexandra Grant on Launching a New Wine and See Nice Artwork When You Journey

When Alexandra Grant was 12, her mom introduced her to a restaurant in Paris and ordered her a Coca-Cola. The server advised the pair that Coke wasn’t good for a younger woman and introduced them a bottle of wine and two glasses as an alternative.

Grant, a celebrated visible artist who splits her time between Los Angeles and Berlin, brings this vivid, top-up-my-wine-glass vitality to journey and her in depth slate of artistic tasks. She’s recognized for her exhibitions around the globe; most not too long ago, Grant debuted hanging neon items at Warsaw’s Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature and silk-screen, acrylic, and coloured pencil collages at France’s CAPC Musée d’artwork Contemporain de Bordeaux. (She’s additionally made headlines as Keanu Reeves’ girlfriend.)

This month, the worldwide philanthropist launched a glowing wine with Sonoma County’s J Vineyards & Vineyard known as Love Wine—proper in time for Valentine’s Day. A portion of the gross sales from the super-approachable, scrumptious brut cuvée advantages her grantLOVE basis, which helps feminine and BIPOC artists.

“I am satisfied making a bottle of wine is loads like making a murals,” Grant advised me after we met on the Love Wine preview at J Vineyards & Vineyard in Healdsburg, California. One other similarity, she identified, is that they’re each for any traveler. Wine and artwork may be your raison de voyager, whether or not you’re a Klimt connoisseur and an avid oenophile, or somebody who likes a glass of white wine at a Parisian café and pokes their head right into a gallery in a classy neighborhood.

“You possibly can enter from all totally different ranges,” Grant stated. “And each wine and artwork are extra accessible than individuals assume. I believe they see it on that form of increased stage, like, ‘this is not for me, proper?’” However each are for a wider viewers, she insisted. That’s one of many objectives of Love Wine; you may nerd out over the glowing wine’s dosage—100% pinot meunier, per award-winning Sonoma winemaker Nicole Hitchcock—and gorgeous label, designed by interdisciplinary artist Genevieve Gaignard. However you can even see it as a scrumptious and terribly fairly bottle of bubbly that transports you to the Northern California coast in a single sip.

When Grant and I sat down the subsequent day at Farmhouse Inn, I advised her my objective was to see extra artwork once I traveled. How ought to somebody like me—who took one artwork historical past class in faculty—truly try this?

“I believe avenue artwork is a good way,” Grant stated. “Definitely social media can play a constructive function in discovery. I believe a good way to seek out out about an artwork scene is to go to a bookstore that has a extremely good artwork guide choice, as a result of artists and curators and intellectuals are going to go to that place to purchase their books, too.”

Grant has good luck discovering native artwork reveals from postings at bookshops as a result of she tends to journey with locals relatively than hitting a vacation spot’s must-see sights. “I am not so fascinated by tourism,” she stated. “I discover it actually complicated, the concept that I need to go stand in line and take a look at one thing and be scorching.”

As an alternative, she loves to hunt out a recent artwork museum, which she stated is a good entry level for neophtye artwork followers. “Once I was a little bit woman, I keep in mind going to the Museo Tamayo in Mexico Metropolis, and seeing Hockney for the primary time—there’s something that is past language about artwork. I understood then it was like a world code, you already know, that artwork and the curiosity in it’s shared internationally.”

Lately, Grant has been often touring to Poland for work and plans to return to South Korea this 12 months for an exhibition on the Plastic Artwork Seoul present in Could 2025.

“I really like the meals in Korea, and the humor, even simply the truth that the workforce I work with calls me Grant due to the best way the language works,” she advised me. “After which I simply began going to Poland within the final 4 years—actually thrilling place to go to, very attention-grabbing delicacies, structure, and a variety of dedication to tradition in a means that is very totally different from different locations.”

As we wrapped up our rainy-day hangout, we ran by means of the tried-and-true journey questions (favourite airplane film?). Seems, even Grant’s inflight routine revolves round artwork.  

“My go-to transfer is to observe the most recent animated film on the airplane; I’m typically within the children’ film part. I’m the largest fan of the artistry and the expertise that goes into making these tales,” she stated.

There you could have it: Touring for artwork begins at takeoff. For the total inspired-by-Alexandra-Grant journey remedy, order an in-flight glass of wine, too. Coca-Cola’s dangerous for you.