Artist Alexandra Grant on Launching a New Wine and The best way to 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 informed the pair that Coke wasn’t good for a younger lady and introduced them a bottle of wine and two glasses as a substitute.

Grant, a celebrated visible artist who splits her time between Los Angeles and Berlin, brings this brilliant, top-up-my-wine-glass power to journey and her intensive slate of artistic tasks. She’s identified for her exhibitions around the globe; most lately, Grant debuted placing 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 referred to 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 rather a lot like making a murals,” Grant informed me once 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 could 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 suppose. I feel they see it on that type of increased degree, 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 possibly can 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 too 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 following day at Farmhouse Inn, I informed her my aim was to see extra artwork after I traveled. How ought to somebody like me—who took one artwork historical past class in faculty—really do this?

“I feel avenue artwork is a good way,” Grant stated. “Actually social media can play a constructive position in discovery. I feel a good way to search out out about an artwork scene is to go to a bookstore that has a very 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 points of interest. “I am not so excited about tourism,” she stated. “I discover it actually complicated, the concept I need to go stand in line and have a look at one thing and be sizzling.”

As an alternative, she loves to hunt out a up to date artwork museum, which she stated is a superb entry level for neophtye artwork followers. “Once I was a little bit lady, 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 recognize, that artwork and the curiosity in it’s shared internationally.”

Just lately, Grant has been recurrently touring to Poland for work and plans to return to South Korea this yr for an exhibition on the Plastic Artwork Seoul present in Might 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 informed me. “After which I simply began going to Poland within the final 4 years—actually thrilling place to go to, very fascinating delicacies, structure, and loads of dedication to tradition in a method that is very totally different from different locations.”

As we wrapped up our rainy-day hangout, we ran via 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 usually within the youngsters’ film part. I’m the most important fan of the artistry and the expertise that goes into making these tales,” she stated.

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