Welcome to the first installment of CRAVE Culture, a curated quarterly newsletter.
Here, you can discover the world of CRAVE, where intimacy meets self-expression realized in passionate creativity and elevated forms of beauty.
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SELF EXPRESSION
In Celebration of Pride, Discover CRAVE’s Portrait Project
Photos by Michael Topolovac, CRAVE's CEO
What does it mean to desire, be vulnerable, share pleasure in private and public, or delight in our bodies and of those we connect with?
The CRAVE Portrait project aims to highlight the joy of sharing yourself fully. With two photographs side-by-side, one from the Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco’s iconic celebration of pleasure, and one from their daily lives. With the CRAVE factory sitting on the route of the Fair, we found an opportunity to capture beautiful, tender, fierce portraits of humans, celebrating the vulnerability and joy of individual diversity and shared connection.
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AGENT OF PLEASURE
Spotlight: Phoenix Fire Flow
Post by CRAVE
CRAVE’s Agents of Pleasure are unique individuals who honor their desires and are fearless about expressing themselves. For our first feature, we highlight Phoenix, a movement artist who enchants with her fire dances. Phoenix wears Vesper 2 in rose gold.
CRAVE COLLABORATION
A Map to Pleasure No. 008
Image by Joce Cova in Collaboration with CRAVE
It can be difficult to find the words to talk about pleasure. We partnered with illustrator Joce Cova to bring you a series of Pleasure Maps, designed to provide inspiration for conversation and visual aid to support intimacy.
ART OF EXPRESSION
Secret Spaces by Painter Joan Semmel
Post by @lovecrave
“I wanted the body to be seen as a woman experiences herself, rather than through the reflection of the mirror or other's eyes.” -Joan Semmel, Secret Spaces 1976.
On exhibit at the Tate Museum, American artist Joan Semmel's oil painting Secret Spaces reclaims the nude from her own gaze. The painting shows her nude body abstracted and viewed from above; the right breast is flattened, the upper torso shortened, and the limbs appear as overlapping shapes rather than a coherent whole. The texture of the artist’s flesh and the hairs on her arm are painted with fine brush strokes, and the contours of her form – enlarged and cropped within the frame – begin to resemble a rolling landscape. Semmel subverts the stereotype of nude portraits of women painted by men: “I wanted to subvert this tradition from within.”
CRAVE FOUNDATION SPOTLIGHT
Sophia Wallace Releases Unconquerable Necklace
Image by Sophia Wallace
Sophia Wallace, artist and CRAVE Foundation for Women Grantee, announces her first collection of Unconquerable necklaces in solid 14-karat gold. Most recently seen at the NYC Dyke March in balloon form, the design is based on Wallace's iconic large-scale clitoris collection. Wallace is a conceptual artist working at the intersection of bodies and ethics. The release includes rose, yellow, and white gold, with and without gemstones.
CRAVE IN THE WILD
Vesper 2 on Madonna’s Single Cover
Post by @lovecrave
Madonna has re-released her 2015 hit Back That Up to the Beat, and we are honored to see Vesper 2 photographed on the icon herself as the cover of her single.
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