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Your Ultra Modern Living Hostess |
Providing party planning, decorating & entertainment
for Mai Tais, Martinis and Other Special Ocassions! |
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All About Cherry Capri
The Fine Artist
About the Artist |
Come for Sun Swim Fun |
Sparkles in Quick Sand |
Group Shows |
Available for Sale
Cherry Capri's work is inspired by vintage matchbook art from the 1950s and 1960s.
The work also serves to educate viewers about the preservation of Mid-Century Modern architecture
and signage.
Cherry's work has been exhibited alongside many of the greats of the low brow and West Coast
Southern California contemporary art scene: Lynn Naylor, Chris Reccardi, Miles Thompson, Joe Vitale, the Pizz and others.
In fact, there is a legendary menu from a private dinner party hosted by M Modern Gallery
(after the historically defining 2004 group show "Modern Love")
that features the doodle art and signatures of 7 pop culture luminaries: Shag, Mark Ryden, Marion Peck, Tim Biskup, Seonna Hong, Gary Bassman
and yours truly, Cherry Capri!
Over the years Cherry has amassed a large collection of rare matchbooks from 1940s, through 1970s.
Matchbook art, especially the illustrative style art produced during the Golden Age
(1920s through 1960s)
is still under-appreciated. The role of the designer and illustrator in creating these ephemeral
artifacts should not be underestimated. The seminal book, Close Cover before Striking, by Thomas Steele,
Jim Heimann and Rod Dyer, brought the art form to popular consciousness in 1987.
In it they state
"These mini billboards, tucked away in pocket sized convenience, free for the asking,
still stand as 'striking' examples of early graphics in both simplicity and design."
So each painting in this series is inspired by a real artifact of history, a vintage matchbook exposed
in a much larger forum. Thus, tiny matchbooks are recreated literally twelve times or more their
original size. The acrylic on panel paintings use many layers of color with the addition of glitter
and sand textural accents to evoke an authentic distressed matchbook feeling. Nicks and dings on the
paintings only serve to further enrich the ephemeral quality of the work. You may also see non-photo
blue pencil lines indicative of early paste-up.
It is interesting to consider that the original art for these matchbooks was probably on a large scale
not unlike these paintings. The images pre-date our age of computer generated graphics and fonts by
decades when traditional commercial art was hand drawn and lettered and then shrunk through the analogue
process of cameras and photostats. So maybe somewhere in the backs of artists’ garages the original
works still exist.
These paintings attempt to bring an appreciation for matchbook cover design to consciousness in a way
that Andy Warhol provided exposure and recognition for the work of commercial packaging (soup cans
and soap boxes) in the 1960s. They also offer rare romantic looks at cultural icons of our past,
a gritty look at the grandeur of landmarks that are lost forever to the sands of time.
If you are interested in purchasing a print or original painting by Cherry Capri,
please click here.
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