Snow White
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - May - June 2014

Iliana adjusts her crisply-laundered lab coat, gleaming in the always-summer fluorescence of the ceiling lights, as she re-seats herself upon the tall stool before the laminar flow Biohazard hood. Her hairnet, face mask, blouse, hosiery, and walking shoes are similarly a vision of shimmering whiteness, although not quite as bright as the lab coat, which fluoresces from the embedded whiteners. Iliana’s short-length hair nestles beneath the porous tea-bag paper of her head coverlet, and her hair coordinates in platinum. Only her skirt contrasts with that arctic look, but Iliana’s lab coat leaves but a narrow strip of her tweedy grey visible.

Model Vacation
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - September - October 2013

At Last!

That first day of vacation at the beach and Rachel wears her promiscuously tight bikini in this intense sunlight. The solar glare favors her medium-length blond hair as it glints golden-accent-streaked in caramel brown.

Her skin: urban-pasty-white: she will use more sunscreen than the others. Rachel brought three bottles of tanning oil in the canvas gym bag which she flung on the sand just before snapping open the rented beach umbrella and spreading out her just-bought-for-this-day over-sized beach towel. Within her gym bag she stores her cigarettes, lighter and keys and she also packs a cooler loaded with ice and cold sodas so that into that first hour, when the heat of the sun and the drying of the beach breeze creates a thirst that demands a drink, Rachel can tear off the tab and slug down her first gulps on-demand. That’s followed by the overwhelming urge to accompany it with a cigarette.

Smoking Virtuoso
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - March - April 2014

When the famed violinist Dalila lights up, she turns the heads of concert-goers who flee outdoors during intermissions at Severance Hall, Cleveland. They are agog at how she enjoys a smoky duet with her Dunhill Black. One observer remarks “she deserves the title ‘smoking virtuoso’ bringing her gold Yves St Laurent lighter up to her cigarette to bestow it with life, and thus entwine with her in a glowing, smoky creation, flowing together”.

Kissing My Friend
by Freida Theant

SMOKE SIGNALS MAGAZINE - September - October 2011

The public knows me as a prize-winning artist, invited to interviews for magazines and talk shows, but that’s far from how I started out.

But first, understand this: women enchant me when they light their cigarettes, when they expel their chalky, membrane-thin sheets from moist, barely spaced lips, and when they concave their cheeks and make taut their mouth around a slightly staining filter tip during a hungry pull. On those increasingly rare occasions where I happen across feminine smoking, I pause and watch them, transfixed. The memories of her smoky immersion, her cloudy delights of nasal and oral joy compel me afterwards to capture it on canvas and paper. But for years I felt that images of this kind were not to be shared. They aren’t Art and they certainly aren’t marketable.