Where Smoke Becomes Art

This summer, I went to China. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t like traveling. I don’t like airports, jetlag, or pretending to enjoy tourist traps. But sometimes you do it anyway. Sometimes you get on the damn plane because it’s what you’re supposed to do. And when I do travel, I treat it like a job. I’m there to collect.

China didn’t disappoint. Flea markets, back alleys, dirty little shops stacked to the ceiling with junk. That’s where I lived for most of my trip. I gathered whatever I could find—magazines, old newspapers, fragments of the Mao era. Trash for some, treasure for others. I even spent a couple of days taking abstract photographs of peeling paint, broken walls, and crumbling textures in the cities. These photos will end up online, free for other scavengers like me—designers, collagists, whoever wants them. That’s just how I work.

But here’s the thing about junk: sometimes it sticks to you in ways you don’t expect. In China, it wasn’t just the junk. It was the smoke. Cigarette smoke, everywhere. Men standing on street corners puffing like they were trying to hold the world together with their lungs. And they don’t just smoke—they share. Offer a cigarette to your buddy, your brother, your father-in-law. Forget to offer one, and you’ve insulted half the family.

Sharing is caring, or so I learned.

It got to me. I started noticing the cigarette packs. Bright, flashy, bold. Some looked cheap, others like they belonged in a damn art gallery. Branding on overdrive. So, I started collecting them, too. Call it a bad habit. By the time I got home, I had a pile of cigarette packs staring at me like they’d just moved in rent-free.

That’s when Daddy’s Cigarettes started to take shape.

“Daddy.” What a loaded word. You can take it however you want. It could mean Big Brother China, watching over everything, blowing smoke rings around your freedom. Or it could mean something smaller, like my father-in-law, sitting across from me with his quiet nod and a pack of smokes between us. That’s the thing about words—they’re slippery. They mean what you need them to mean.

So I started cutting, gluing, layering. Those cigarette packs became something else entirely. A memory, maybe. Or a statement. Or both. Cigarettes are supposed to be consumed and tossed. Forgotten. But these packs? They’re full of life, stories, gestures. Late-night conversations. The awkward silence between people who aren’t used to talking but need something to hold.

This collage is about that. About the moments you don’t realize are important until they’ve passed. It’s about the little rituals we take for granted—offering a cigarette, lighting one up, letting the smoke carry something unspoken between us.

Daddy’s Cigarettes is more than just scraps glued to a board. It’s what lingers when the smoke clears. It’s about finding beauty in the disposable, meaning in the mundane. Life is messy, layered, full of junk. Art should be too.

So here it is. Smoke, junk, and everything in between. Take it or leave it. Either way, the memory stays.