Standing on the shoulders of artists

For those who didn’t know yet (perhaps a few people over in China), I got married this summer. And, besides the fact that I got to make an honest woman out of my fiancée (admittedly an important thing in and of itself), I also got to meet Jordane Saget, a Paris street artist we loved and that my brother had contacted to ask if he would make us a wedding gift. The rest is history: he said yes, we got the experience of a lifetime (that and the great speeches throughout our wedding night, all 8 of them) and I started working with him in promoting his work.

When I say “working”, I basically mean I give him a few ideas here and there, proofread some stuff, put him in contact with people who could help with his projects… not such a big deal, especially because a) I find the guy to be so talented that it is a pleasure simply helping him out, b) he happens to be as nice as he is talented, which is all the more remarkable, because my limited experience with somewhat public figures has led me to believe that the bigger the name, the stupider the ego. The night we met him, he gave us a chair he’d painted on because he was “tired of looking at it”. We’re not.

As I help a little with the texts he posts on Instagram along with his pictures, he offered that I would write one of those. I naturally said yes — what am I, stupid? — assuming that it would happen down the line, in the off season, not right after Saget secured the launch of an entire series of original T-shirts with Agnès B., one of France’s most celebrated fashion designers. But, guess what, it did. Last weekend, he sent over a new pic of him drawing on a footbridge near the town where he lives (which coincidentally is the town I grew up in: I’m telling you, it’s eerie) with the comment: “Write whatever you feel like with that”.

And so I did, and he posted it yesterday. To date, the picture has already gotten almost 750 likes. Obviously more for the artwork than for my little story, but the point is this: the highest I ever got for a picture was 596 likes and it happened 2 years ago and I’m what they call a micro-influencer, meaning I spend most of my awake time on Instagram (to the point I regularly get blocked for excessive use).

And I can tell you that, if I ask my wife to tell a story with one of my pictures, it won’t change a thing. Wait, it actually might… Let me get back to you on this.

Photo: Jordane Saget.