In my ideal writer’s setup, there are always two cigarettes within arm’s reach. One bears a faint kiss of red lipstick; the other is a stubbed-out squiggle. Both are ceramic (smoking’s not for me), but they are talismans nonetheless—part of artist Amiee Byrne’s body of work that recasts everyday objects in clay. Past pieces include a coiled extension cord, a stack of pastel dish sponges, a deflated Mylar balloon. But her cigarette series, which spans large vases and a ceramic-topped fragrance collaboration (Smoker’s Kiss) with perfumer Emily L’Ami, has lit a collective fuse. Her upcoming solo show, “Aftermath,” opening June 24 at Los Angeles’s Franchise gallery, illustrates the point. Alongside imaginative new vignettes—an exploded piñata, say, or the disaster zone following a toddler’s tantrum—there will be a self-contained little smoke shop, for anyone needing a facsimile fix.
“This cancerous stick is so special to so many people,” says Byrne, an Australian with a studio in Los Angeles’s Silver Lake. “People really, really identify with it, and for lots of different reasons.” There is the cinematic glamour, the youthful transgression, the rituals after dinner and sex. A loved one’s pack-a-day habit triggers sensory memories; quitting does too. (My grandfather kept celery sticks in his shirt pocket: a substitute for chewing tobacco.) In an oblique way, smoking—loosely defined, with room for incense and tobacco-inspired cologne and Byrne’s individual cigarette butts, which she is offering for sale for the first time—made sense as an organizing principle for this offbeat Father’s Day guide. Everyone can relate.
True to the theme, the artist Bernie Kaminski has created a limited run of papier-mâché matchbooks for this occasion. (For details, see the listing below; proceeds go to Aid For Life, which provides assistance to asylum seekers in New York City.) His now 15-year-old daughter, Eleanor, unwittingly lent the first stroke of inspiration, bringing home a papier-mâché seahorse from school. In the years since, Kaminski has fashioned autographed baseballs, restaurant guest checks, a municipal pay phone. “I made some matchbooks that I put in a fake junk drawer,” he says, referring to a veritable magnum opus: Casio calculator, Film Forum ticket stub, measuring tape, ketchup packets, Rolaids—plus the black-and-white Odeon matches he has recreated for Vanity Fair. “It was only after I got the idea to put [the matchbooks] in a shoebox”—papier-mâché Adidas, filled nearly to the brim—“that I started cranking them out.”
Meanwhile, the chef and food scientist David Zilber offers a counterpoint to smoking with his new edition for Rose, the California-based cannabis outfit known for its produce-driven Delights (a riff on the Turkish sweets). Zilber, a Noma alum who co-wrote the restaurant’s sprawling guide to fermentation, got acquainted with the brand by test-driving samples in Copenhagen, including past collaborations with Enrique Olvera and Natasha Pickowicz. “I’ve long suffered from back pain (20 years in kitchens + scoliosis is a recipe for disaster), and their CBD gummies really, actually, worked to chill my nerves and muscles out whenever my lumbar was acting up,” he writes by email. “And as for the THC, well, they’re just perfect. Easy to dose and genuinely delightful.” Zilber momentarily had his hands full with a new baby, but the Rose partnership picked up late last year, “when I only just started to feel like I was getting the whole ‘being a dad’ thing under my belt.” His creation—Nashi pear with kimchi brine and a dusting of gochugaru—reflects a bright, inventive worldview. “Leaving the high-octane life of fine dining opened up so much for me, including fatherhood,” he adds. “That said, I’m currently more exhausted than ever. Haha.”
Laura Regensdorf
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