Objet d’Art: Summer’s Not Over Yet

ABOVE: ISAAC NICHOLS, “BANANA GIRL.” PHOTO COURTESY OF JACK PLANTER.

Every month, Interview picks an artist- or designer-created object that straddles the line between aesthetics and function. Subdued tastes need not apply.

August comes with a twinge of nostalgia for simpler times, when murmurs of “back to school” invigorated efforts to stave off September with pools, beaches, or just the lawn sprinkler. Things became a bit more complicated as the years went by, but little pleasures seem to stay the same. For this month’s Objet d’Art, we gravitated toward Isaac Nichols’s “Banana Girl” pot design, which we feel, in all of its fruit-patterned swimsuit glory, captures a bit of summer spirit. Though the banana has obvious Andy Warhol associations, Nichols borrowed the illustration from hand-painted bodega signs of fruit in Brooklyn, where he lives and works.

“I think it’s the most iconic of the fruits, and definitely my favorite, and favorite to paint,” he says. A Cooper Union grad whose playful anthropomorphic ceramics are sold under the name Group Partner, Nichols recently perfected the darker skin tone. Meanwhile, he, too, is ambivalent about the changing seasons. “Oye, I don’t want to think about it…no more swimming, no more cool-breeze night walks. I always feel like the summer goes by so fast and I didn’t get out enough. I usually try and pack it all in in the last few weeks. I’ll definitely be upstate this weekend.” 

ISAAC NICHOLS’S “BANANA GIRL” POTS ARE PRICED AT $65 EACH AND AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH HIS WEBSITE.


Objet D’Art runs every month. For more, click here.