For a final project in my college Art class “Life Drawing,” with Professor Brian Goeltzenleuchter, I decided to represent a nude figure out of cups of coffee showing the different tones and shades made by the addition of cream. This was particularly significant as this was the first time I had applied for tuition assistance through Starbucks benefits, and it gave me an opportunity to show my appreciation and skill as not only an artist, but as a Starbucks employee.
I began by asking my store assistant manager whether Starbucks would be willing to sponsor the cups, expired coffee and cream. She got approval from our District Manager Dan Phillips, and then gave me 350 sample cups, a half-gallon of heavy whipping cream and some leftover bags of expired coffee. I took home two broken-down cardboard boxes from our bullets of coffee which I taped together to make a base platform. I bought hot glue sticks for my glue gun and began to glue all the cups onto the platform.
It took a couple of days of intense work but eventually I had all 350 cups secured on there. I had to take it to college to show my Art Professor how it was coming, and discuss my strategies to complete it there on our Final Day Exhibition. He was excited, but also warned me of the possibility that it wouldn’t work.
Strangely enough that took some pressure off me, so I went forward still inspired, but treating it more as an experimental adventure.
The next step was to draw the figure to the scale of the cups. I taped together sketch pad paper to fit over all of the cups. I took a female figure print I’d chosen after researching internet images and represented her using proportion and rendering drawing skills I’d worked on in my Life Drawing class to make the exact size I’d need. I purposely exaggerated the dark and light areas.
I cut out the figure with scissors and found the best placement on top of the cups. I began to mark initials on the inside of each individual cup with a Sharpie pen to indicate which of the 5 tones would fill the inside.
Here’s where it became trickey, but I marked them with tones, included all the background cup areas which would be filled with white, and even added a letter in several spelling out “Starbucks Coffee” as well as my name in the bottoms of strategically placed cups.
I calculated the amounts of each tone needed by adding up all the numbers of cups multiplied by the 4 ounce cup size. I realized that I was going to have to brew 3.5 gallons of coffee by 2pm the day of the exhibition, which happened to be the very next day! I went to the Dollar Tree store and purchased five 2-quart pourable closed containers, a bus tray to hold them, and a turkey baster in case of an error in pouring.
I hash-marked how many of each marked cup and added the amounts. My colors were black coffee (BK), dark medium (DM), medium (M), medium light (ML), light (L), and white (WT). I calculated the cups and quarts. Thursday December 17th 2009 was the Final Exhibition day so I began grinding and brewing full pots of coffee in my home machine from 10am until 2pm, pouring them first into my 2 gallon watering can, and then I found a plastic 5 gallon bucket (I also made a thermos of drinkable coffee so as not to disappoint anyone who might be thirsty). I put the bucket of coffee into a black plastic bag, labeled each pouring container with its color name, placed them with the cream, a large stirring spoon, scooping cup and the turkey baster into my truck and strapped down the platform of cups onto the back as well and drove very slowly for a ½ mile into the MiraCosta college parking lot. I placed the platform on the picnic table behind the Art classroom with about an hour to mix and pour before anyone arrived. I first created my palette of colors in the marked containers.
I poured the figure’s colors into the cups beginning with the lightest first as I knew I would need more than one container of that color, therefore wanting to be able to continuously compare shades as I went. I stood on the bench to take a look from above and was amazed to see the figure emerging! My Professor arrived and a few others helped me lift the entire piece onto a rolling platform to transport it inside under lights for display. I mixed the rest of the cream with water and filled all 116 cups of white background. Photographs were taken. After the exhibition we rolled the piece outside. On the count of three we tipped it over letting the coffee and cream go down the drain—non-toxic! Here it is finished:
