Feast Your Eyes

Feast Your Eyes is a unique collaborative culinary experience where food and cocktails are challenged and inspired by visual art. The featured artists were Shawn Bryan, Georgie Nakima, & Sloane Siobhan. What I love about these women is their outlook on life, personalities, and how they draw inspiration onto the canvas. With the different styles of painting, I wanted to see how their works influenced food.

With the mixologists DiSean Burns & Justin Hazelton, I wanted to see how cocktails could be influenced through food and art, and they did not disappoint. They both had individual cocktails of their own to create as well as a collaborative cocktail that also paired with the food. The chefs were Chris Coleman, Greg Collier, Michael Bowling, Hector Gonzalez, Jennifer Young, & Chris Young. Again, very different cooking styles, however it was fun and interesting to see how they were able to create a dish based off of the visual art. Throughout the dinner, it felt like a real culinary journey through art. This concept has been something I’ve dreamed about executing for quite some time now. As a photographer who focuses primarily on food content, I felt that it was important to be a vessel to bridge various mediums together in a communal fashion. The intent was to build community, change the perspective of how food, art, and cocktails are consumed while elevating palates, as well as exposing a broad audience to artists who were unfamiliar. FYE was created by myself Jonathan Cooper along with Josh Galloway. We also partnered with Davita Galloway and Dion Galloway of Dupp & Swatt and Chef Gregory Collier of The Yolk Cafe to bring this beautiful feast to life.

Huge thanks to Michelle Meesh Flowers & Joshua Galloway for capturing this event.