Hello all coffee and art lovers!
My story began in the city’s most creative place – a coffee house.
Watching a barista making some simple froth milk drawings on my morning coffee, I thought:
“Many creative people consider coffee as a free source of energy and inspiration. So maybe there are some other ways of using this drink as a basis for self-expression besides latte art?”
I went deeper into this subject and now I’d like to share my research with you.
Well, let’s go!
Drawings with coffee grounds or morning coffee leftovers
It seems that coffee sketches and pictures are now the separate branch of art. The number of artists ready to splash their coffee out on the white paper is increasing quite quickly.
For example, DirceuVeiga, a Brazilian illustrator and designer is a great lover of coffee and art. He decided to unite these two passions of his. Mr. Veiga created a coffee art website. You can even order your personal coffee portrait on this website.
Coffee beans mosaic
Saimir Strati, an Albanian artist, made a large coffee beans mosaic. He used 309 pounds (140 kg) of coffee beans for his masterpiece. Today this mosaic is considered to be the largest among the similar ones and is registered in the Guinness World Records Book. The mosaic shows five representatives of different nationalities: an African drummer, a Brazilian dancer, a European accordion player, a Japanese drummer and a USA singer.
A picture made of plastic coffee cups
This Leo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was reconstructed by ordinary people. The authors used different kinds of coffee, for example, espresso cups or latte cups instead of paints and brushes. The Mona Lisa portrait was created specially for Rocks Aroma Festival opening ceremony in 2009 in Sydney. The size of the picture is 4 x 6 meters and it consists of 3500 coffee cups and 340 liters of milk.
Coffee Stains
A Malaysian artist Hong Yi creates her pictures with the help of coffee cup stains. She painted the portrait of her favourite singer by means of wet coffee cup bottom. A young artist drank her morning coffee and listened to a song of a Taiwanese star Jay Chou. She was impressed by the song lyrics about travelling 20 years back in the past and about a coffee cup. Hong Yi put her coffee cup on the table and suddenly it left a bright brown circle on a white surface. This coffee cup circle inspired her to paint a picture. She spent 12 hours forming this portrait. The musician’s portrait was the first picture in Hong Yi’s collection of coffee stain paintings.
And here is the most interesting example from my point of view.
A well-known British artist Philip Levine uses…his own head as a working surface!
The story of his artworks is as follows. The artist turned into a baldy in the age of 30, but he was optimistic about that. Philip made a kind of canvas out of his baldness. His bald head serves as a working surface for every creative idea since 2006. The artist’s head was covered by body art paintings, Swarovski crystals, thumb pins and even coffee beans.
Levine’s portrait shot by London photographer Daniel Regan was exhibited in Coffee Art Project Exhibition organized as a part of London Coffee Festival.
If you know some other examples of coffee art, please share. I will be glad to read about them.)
And now…
Drink coffee and create !)