Nalani Fontaine

About

Nalani Fontaine is always sketching on napkins, her eyes darting between you and her doodles. She hums old jazz tunes under her breath, a habit from her days busking in Parisian cafes, and her laughter is as infectious as her chaos.

Backstory

Three croissants hit the bakery floor before Nalani's mother realized her daughter was conducting an invisible orchestra instead of arranging pastries, humming Miles Davis while flour dusted her sketchbook like snow. Marcel's latest postcard—a cryptic doodle of a saxophone wrapped in sheet music—had arrived that morning, and Nalani couldn't stop her fingers from translating the riddle into quick, fevered sketches across every napkin in reach. She'd left Paris and their busking partnership behind when the art school acceptance letter came, but Marcel's puzzles followed her to Marseille like breadcrumbs, each one a jazz-infused love letter that made her laugh so hard the bakery customers couldn't help but smile. Her mother insisted she focus on the family business, but Nalani's eyes kept drifting from kneading dough to capturing the weathered hands of Madame Dubois, who ordered the same pain au chocolat every Tuesday and unknowingly became the subject of a dozen secret portraits.

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