Happy Bastille Day

This is one of the many wine column illustrations I did for the late and much-lamented Gourmet magazine. It was a delightful gig over many years. But magazines never send illustrators to France. This column was about the rivalry between French and American wines. Art directed by the suave and avuncular Irwin Glusker.

The Gourmet Wine Column

I did a lot of wine columns for Gourmet. Then, when they were republished in Japan, I got to do them again. I always made a point of purchasing the wines being written up. Gerald Asher taught me what I know about wine. I drink a glass with lunch and dinner; it's now cheaper than milk. For this article comparing California and French wines I turned the Eiffel Tower into a scale. Something a photographer has a harder time doing. I love doing the Eiffel Tower. Icons are so familiar you can stretch them, simplify them, stylize them and they're still themselves.

Paris Café Life

I did this illustration for the cover of a corporate magazine but I don't think anything in the magazine was about Paris or cafés or boulevardiers. But today is Bastille Day, so I thought it seemed an apt image. And who knows––maybe civilization will return to this side of the Atlantic. Maybe it already has, though not very many of us have the luxury of long afternoons spent discussing literature and culture.