WATERLOO — Coffee cups became a blank canvas for Kitchener high school art students.
Creating art on the disposable cups was a collaboration between Forest Heights Collegiate Institute in Kitchener and Seven Shores in Waterloo.
Several of the unique creations are on display in the café where they’re catching the attention of customers waiting in line for their caffeine fix.
“People keep trying to order coffee in them,” said Sarah Whyte, one of the café owners.
Whyte is friends with art teacher Melanie Kloet, who asked for a sleeve of cups for her Grade 11 students to do a quick project for their pen and ink unit.
Kloet sent pictures of the finished art to Whyte to see what the students came up with.
“I thought they were amazing,” Whyte said. And immediately she thought: “Well, we should probably share this with the world.”
Ten cups were picked to be displayed at the co-operatively owned café, and each day one cup is featured on its Instagram page.
“I love the diversity of expressions,” Whyte said. “I sent away plain cups and they came back art, which is such a beautiful thing.”
Kloet was inspired by the hashtag #coffeecupart trending on social media, and her students rose to the challenge of creating art on a surface other than the traditional flat paper.
“They turned out so well,” Kloet said. “These are such awesome, talented students.”
The connection to Seven Shores was an added bonus because it offered a venue for her students to share their art with the community when there are limited venues for shows during the pandemic.
“To get an opportunity to showcase student are in public was so exciting,” Kloet said.
That is something new for student Simona Radu. “It’s cool to have this opportunity.”
The assignment intrigued Radu, who had never done anything like drawing on a paper cup. She came up with a series of plants with vivid red dots behind them.
“It was better than I expected and I really enjoyed the process,” Radu said.
The idea, she admitted, was suggested by her sister who has a much greener thumb than her: “I’m not the best at keeping plants alive.”
Xander Cluney’s cup portrayed a giant angler fish looming behind a diver. He thought it would be fun to try drawing on a cup, but soon he encountered a unique problem that required an equally unusual solution — mitts to keep from smudging the artwork in progress.
“It was definitely a bit tricky trying to hold it and the ink got a bit messy,” Cluney said. “Other than that it was really fun to do.”
