Coffee Culture

where we find comfort

Overlapping paper circles with blue and white imagery

This series began with the creation of Café Curtains in 2023, a window installation at Hamers Coffee in Toronto for the Design TO Festival. Developed as a commentary on throwaway consumer culture, Coffee Culture is now an ongoing body of work that experiments with cast-off materials—used tea bags, coffee filters, and discarded coffee packaging—to explore themes of home, ritual, comfort, and the alchemy of reuse. These unexpected materials capture the ephemeral imprints of daily rituals, moments in time, and the comfort of home, adding layers of history and life to each artwork.

Inspired by the traditional domestic arts of patchwork and quilting, many works in the series take the form of quilt-like patchwork panels. While these panels evoke the warmth and comfort of home, closer inspection reveals the reality of the materials' origins, creating a striking contrast between their past and present forms. The work challenges conventional ideas of beauty and value, asking viewers to reimagine their own rituals of consumption and waste

Ritual Comforts, 2023, 36" x 36"

A pieced quilt panel made from strips of used coffee packaging

The back of a quilt panel, made of pieced coffee filters with cyanoypea

The patterned front of this double-sided panel is made up of strips of coffee packaging, sewn together in a quilt-like design. The back is composed of used coffee filters covered in cyanotype imagery of loose coffee beans.

Revival, 2024, 46" x 54"

A pieced quilt made from used coffee filters with blue and white imagery rectangles and a few small strips of colour

A pieced quilt made from used coffee filters, some with cyanotype imagery.

This double-sided quilt is made with used coffee filters. The coloured imagery was creating using the cyanotype process and Solarfast dye.

Java Jiving, 2024, 48" x 32"

Strips of discarded coffee packaging are sewn together to create this pieced hanging.

Flow, 2024, 38" x 56"

Used coffee filters patterned with India ink, and dyed with indigo, tea, or left plain, then cut into hexagons and sewn into a grid of threads.

Meadowland, 2023, 48" x 48"

A grid of coloured circles with images of wildflowers and one square with an image of a bee.

A closeup of a grid of circles with wildflower images and one square with a bee image..

Kōhī Coat, 2023, 58" x 29"

Front of a Japanese style jacket made from pieced coffee filters with blue and white imagery, and a few pieces of purple

Back of a Japanese style jacket made from pieced coffee filters with blue and white imagery, and a few pieces of purple.

This Japanese-inspired jacket is made with "fabric" constructed from used coffee filters. The pieced filters are covered with surface design imagery that is created using the cyanotype process, with Solarfast dye accents.

Shadowy images of dried wildflowers, collected from my favourite place, are imprinted onto tea bags by the sun’s UV rays, activating the cyanotype and Solarfast dyes.

Meadowland was awarded a Judge's Choice Award at the
2024 Grand National Fibre Art Exhibition "Delights", and will be on display as follows:

Kootenay Gallery of Art, Castlegar BC - Jun/July 2024
United Contemporary, Pilot Mound, MB - Aug/Sep 2024
Woodstock Art Gallery, Woodstock, ON - Oct 2024 - Jan 2025

Saint John Arts Centre, St. John, N.B. - Mar/Apr 2025

Fragments, 2024, 29" x 38"

Discarded coffee packaging is improv cut and pieced to create this hanging panel.