Why Painter Alexandra Grant Is Blending Fine Art With Fine Wine

The Los Angeles–based artist on embracing sensory experiences and the genesis of her newest collaboration

Photography by BRAD TORCHIA
Words by MARTHA HAYES

Alexandra Grant blends art with wine

Wine making might not seem like an obvious next step for Alexandra Grant, the L.A. artist who has spent her career exploring language and text through thought-provoking paintings, drawings, and sculptures. But for Grant — who frequently collaborates with writers (like Michael Joyce) and philosophers (including Hélène Cixous) and cofounded the art publishing house X Artists’ Books in 2017 with her frequent collaborator and life partner Keanu Reeves — it feels long overdue.

“I’ve wondered since I was younger if I would join the wine industry,” Grant says when we meet at her cavernous downtown studio (and former apartment) to discuss her latest project, a limited-release California Brut Cuvée, the result of a collaboration with California sparkling house J Vineyards & Winery.

Against a backdrop of some of her most powerful, provocative artwork, from her 2019 I Was Born to Love series (neon, acrylic, and oil paint on shaped wood) to the more recent Everything Belongs to the Cosmos (silk screen, colored pencil, acrylic paint, and sumi ink on paper), Grant, 51, cheerfully makes tea and pours snacks into little bowls. She can vividly recall her introduction to wine. It was as a child, when she relocated to Paris from the U.S. with her mother, an American diplomat.

“On our first night in a restaurant, my mom said to the waitress, ‘My daughter is only 12; she should have a Coca-Cola.’ The waitress stormed off, came back with a glass of red wine, and said, ‘Coca-Cola is terrible for your daughter’s health,’ and left,” Grant says, laughing. “I knew what a Kir Royale was by the time I was 13. I realized I had quite a palate.”

This two-year period in France, “seeing this culture, learning about wine as something that was local, complex, and affected by with science, weather, and soil,” had a profound impact on the Ohio-born artist, who founded art and design initiative grantLOVE in 2008 to raise funds for arts nonprofits such as Heart of Los Angeles and Project Angel Food, which is involved in fire-relief efforts. She is the honorary chair of its gala, she has donated two pieces for auction, and she has released four prints on the grantLOVE website, with a portion of the sales going directly to the nonprofit.

“A painting and a good bottle of wine are similar — poetic, physical, sensory experiences,” she says. “Isn’t that what makes us human? These moments. This is what life is about.” Knowing she wanted to do something equally philanthropic with wine — “to support women in the arts and arts education” — Grant started visiting prospective vineyards in California and Europe 10 years ago. When she eventually met Nicole Hitchcock, the estate director and head winemaker of J Vineyards, something clicked.

“We’re data nerds,” she says. “I presented data from the Burns Halperin Report [that from 2008 to 2020 only 11 to 20 percent of opportunities went to women in the arts], and they had prepared data on women and wine. It was clear both industries need to improve in terms of being inclusive to women, and to do so in ways that are not optical but profound.”

“A painting and a good bottle of wine are similar — poetic, physical, sensory experiences.”

LOVE Wine came to fruition when Grant commissioned artist Genevieve Gaignard to design the wine’s colorful label (“she’s someone who could make something exciting that’s also a work of art to open conversations”), and the pair traveled to the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County.

“We created a wine that’s brand-new. I’m not a repackager. I know that would be good business, but that’s not what this is about,” says Grant, whose longer-term vision for additional wines includes other artists over many years. “Genevieve worked closely with Gallo, which owns J Vineyards & Winery, on the label. I worked very closely on the taste profile. We got to make something that none of us would have made had we not come together.”

Collaboration has always been at the heart of Grant’s work, which warranted its first solo exhibition at MOCA in 2007. Her first collaboration with Reeves was a book called Ode to Happiness in 2011; he wrote the words to accompany her paintings.

“When you have a life partner who’s creative, there’s a constant exchange,” she says. “The experience of having another human who is always rooting for you is such a profound feeling. To be loved, and to be allowed enough space to investigate what the other person appreciates about you, is the biggest gift. Not to get too mushy!”

Grant now divides her time between L.A. and Berlin. Over the past year her work has been exhibited in galleries in Bordeaux, Warsaw, and Berlin. Although Europe might represent “new ideas, exchanges, and different politics and responses to the urgencies of today,” California is where her heart is. “It’s walking in nature. It’s the hummingbirds, the owls, reminders of the natural world. It’s Huntington Gardens. It’s people… it’s my love.” She’s talking about Reeves, of course, but she could easily be talking about art — or wine. jwine.com.