Obsessive Coffee Consumption

Kate Bingaman-Burt is a professor at Portland State University and she draws the things that she buys. She also drinks a lot of coffee, so she’s drawn a lot of it in various forms. I talked with her to find out more about her coffee buying habits and her work.

How much do you spend on coffee each month? Too much. I live above a coffee shop (www.cremabakery.com) and we have a very active french press in our apartment. I also frequent Contrary Coffee which is right down the street from my office for my morning Americanos. So, again. I am kind of afraid to add it all up.

How many cups do you have a day? Days when I teach: 2 small cups at home and then a large Americano before class starts. I usually grab another americano in the afternoon before my afternoon class.

Who makes your favorite roast? Stumptown!

How important is coffee to your creative process? Pretty important. Recently I have stopped drinking it at night and have been using yerbe matte tea as a substitute. Also, I try to drink more Americanos over regular coffee because it goes down a bit easier. But I am most certainly addicted.

So many of us have the same addiction Kate! Thanks for sharing some of the intimate details of your coffee love with us. Check out more of Kate’s work at Obsessive Consumption or on her Flickr.

Christoph Niemann’s history with coffee.

“I like coffee so much that I have tea for breakfast: The first cup of the day in particular is so good that I’m afraid I won’t be able to properly appreciate it when I am half-asleep. Therefore, I celebrate it two hours later when I am fully conscious.”

“At 17, I still suffered from coffee schizophrenia: I loved the concept of coffee, but resented the taste. I decided to cure myself through auto-hazing. Around that time, my parents took me on my first trip to Paris. We arrived by train early in the morning and went straight to a little cafe. I ordered a large café au lait and forced down the entire bowl. It worked. Since then I have enjoyed coffee pretty much every day.”

This first appeared in the New York Times Abstract City Blog a year ago, and I still love it just as much today. It’s a great visual history of Christoph Niemann’s relationship with coffee. Enjoy the rest of it over at the New York Times.

Will x Jenna x Coffee Cup

“I was at one of the many local coffee shops in Richmond a few weeks ago with Jenna Chew and she did this sweet drawing on my coffee cup out of nowhere, and I thought it was really cool. So I kept it and took it home and  decided to paint it with watercolor. I guess you could call it a collaboration.”

Check out more from Will Godwin