My Life From the Grounds Up

As soon as I was old enough to drink coffee, I too would quickly flip my cup, and wait my turn. Was it the take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt fortune I was about to hear, or the story the reader was about to weave? Probably both. I was mystified. How could a cup reader see such vivid stories in what looked to me like a muddy clump of coffee grounds?

My fascination with this magical ritual remained with me over the years. This exhibit is a selection of photographs from a larger collection documenting the remains of my own coffee cups over the past five years.  Depending on how much you believe in the fortune-revealing powers of coffee grounds, this display of pictures could be far more personal that if I had presented you with the pages of my diary.

To me, what speaks to the beauty of this ritual is the myriad of interpretations a single image can elicit—a direct reflection of disparate human experiences coming together in one coffee cup.

So what do you see? What’s the story you would tell?