"Kobe"

• Giclee Print -Hahnemuhle Photo Rag

• Unframed

I met Kobe Bryant when walking down bourbon street in New Orleans heading to a wrap party for MTVs reality show Real World. Lakers were our playing our Hornets the following night. I approached Kobe’s entourage of security they didn’t allow me close to Kobe. I handed one of them my 35mm Slide viewer which had a slide of this painting. Security looked at it and said Kobe u gotta see this. He handed it to the great Laker. Kobe looked at it and held it up high to capture the light illuminating the slide.
“WOW! He got Vanessa in there! Lemme call my Mom.”
He called his mother and explained the painting to her when a tear rolled down his left eye.
“What is this?” he asks me.
I respond “It’s a slide of my painting of you.”
“How can I get this?”
He never stops looking at the painting.
“I’ll bring it to you whenever wherever”
“Bring it to the game tomorrow, get his phone number”
I dictated my phone number to his confidant as he patiently took down my contact information. I didn’t hear from him at all.

When Kobe passed away I sent Spike the image of the painting and he quickly purchased it. At the recent grand opening of the Academy Award museum Spike inducted the painting in their permanent archives representing his amazing Kobe Bryant documentary “Kobe Doin Work”.