For about 5 years I was the event director for the Holualoa Coffee and Art Stroll where local coffee farmers were hosted by Art Galleries and storefronts for coffee tasting. For another 5 years I assisted on a coffee farm, walking down the rows of trees in every season and witnessing the whole pain-staking process of what it takes to get that dark rich pour of happiness in your cup every morning.
2/3 of Americans drink coffee but I wonder how many know what coffee beans look like before they are roasted or even that they are inside fruit?
The ripe fruit are called "cherries". They look a little like crab apples but oval. Wait, do you know what crab apples are? They look like table grapes but not translucent. They grow off the branches of the tree in little clusters and while they ripen they change colors. Many Many colors! Kona coffee beans do not ripen all at once and one branch could have many color/ripening stages on it. This is one of the reasons hand-picking is crucial here. Beginning with green, they begin to change to peaches, pinks, reds, yellows, magentas and wines. The cherries are hand picked when they've changed to the reds but not too dark. Inside each cherry are two beans that look just like a roasted coffee bean only they are ivory. The cherries skin and pulp are removed, and the beans are dried, then the hull/parchment is removed revealing a green bean which is then roasted.
I composed from several photos I took, but one branch in particular was showing nearly ALL the colors. And I'm all about ALL the colors. It showed the beginning to the end in all it's coffee cherry glory. And with that I found "my one".
Next I tried a metallic gold, and this was my first time to use a metallic. It placed as my branch brown as I didn't want to use brown and stood in for the yellowish green of the fruit.
Layer 3 was going to be a peach but it came out brick orange on top of the metallic, and also filled in parts of the green veins of the leaves, which I was not excited about. I decided I needed to finish the leaves and carve them out before the red and red adjacent mixing began. Layer 3 was switched to the dark green and I tried (also for the first time) masking off the cherry section with a piece of parchment paper.
Followed by bell pepper red.
After it was finished I laid them out to dry for a couple of hours on long pieces of recycled costco boxes that are laid across my dad's table saws, then I hang them up doe a couple of days. If I go straight to the hang, I've found they curl and it takes much longer to flatten them out later. If I leave them flat, the wind will eventually blow them to the dirty ground, OR and much more likely, one of the wild cats will walk across them, leaving kitty pawprint evidence.
I choose not to do a full green background of leaves and yet the white was looking unfinished to me. I didn't know how to finish so I put it on pause and started carving a new piece.
I came back to it in August and had the idea of faint, more shadow-like branches. Since this is a reduction print there is no block left, so I transferred the designs to the back of a previous block. I traced the branch of cherries over first so I'd know what space I had to work with. I came up with 3 different ones and the placement. I placed my pencil branches face down on the block and rubbed the graphite on. That was when I realized how much carving I'd need to do to keep only these 3 tiny branches.
Desiring to finish in August, I pulled out the yellow, blue and black once more. And I prayed for a green. As I began mixing this time, the right green came. hallelujah!
