Bar Flies

Know a kid who likes to write? This June 15 workshop looks incredible. Details at changing hands.com 📝

Your last round this week, and Friday calls for a proper send-off. Barscapes features Casebeer, an artist—and Phoenix art scene pioneer and sweetheart—who explores meaningful coincidence through mixed media paintings and collage. Set your eyes upon her work here, titled Happy Hour.

The red balloon. An elation, happy hot air, encapsulating a childhood happiness that is by nature fleeting, ephemeral. The dress, screaming gala, Grace Kelly, and at this particular moment in our lifetime, a wistful, longing ode to dressing up. The cornucopia of cocktails to the far corner. The present, wrapped in red, echoing the balloon.

The void, the free fall she exists in. The heavy, grounding, THUD of our brains, the seat of our reality and senses, the harbor of our experiences and memory.

I feel we are all this image; we have been in this surreal, and very real space. Individually and collectively, at the bar and now.

I am Jasmine. I tend bar, illustrate, and create. Find me .wines.black.lines
🌚🥃🌝

Today, Barscapes spotlights contemporary appropriation artist Yasumasa Morimura, and his Daughter of Art History, Theater A, 1989, a provocative recreation of Manet’s Bar at the Folies Bergère.

Morimura inserts his face and body onto women from iconic works of western art, prompting questions of subjectivity and objectivity, as well as ideas and ideals around (feminine) beauty. A glance at his artwork evokes curiosity, inquisition and exploration of the physical and social landscape on the canvas — and perhaps such landscapes in reality.

This artwork is a visual amusement park of the mind. It ushers you in, takes you on different experiences, and leaves you thinking about what just happened. I think back with nostalgia and softness of these moments at the bar, before and after the rush of patrons.

The subject’s facial expression is both limited and knowing. Done with the rush, knowing there will be another, and they will be there for it nonetheless. But are they present?

No matter. Bottles must be opened; a patron will be in need; the crowd will return; the bar will get dirty. And the loop will continue, just like the cabaret. The performers, the bartenders, the patrons—all there with open arms and fists ready.

I am Jasmine. I tend bar, illustrate, and create. Find me .wines.black.lines
🌚🥃🌝

Some levity on the surface today; this round highlights Saul Steinberg, artist, cartoonist and illustrator. His creativity includes but is not at all limited to six decades of work (!) in The New Yorker. Featured here, a bar scene published January 18, 1947.

Steinberg’s drawings can be light-hearted, even whimsical. A closer look shows humor and wisdom, shining through poignant details, illuminating a witty social commentary. And an endearing love for people in the literal and social spaces they inhabit.

It takes keen people-watching, observation and empathy to bring pen and paper to life. Bars can be such cauldrons of inspiration.

I am Jasmine. I tend bar, illustrate, and create. Find me .wines.black.lines
🌚🥃🌝