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Exploring the Brilliant Interweaving of Art and CoffeeDaily Coffee News | 2/20/13

Art and coffee often intersect, but rarely as literally as they do in the work of Raleigh, N.C.-basedJonathan Brilliant, who’s 25-and-counting installations in the “Have Sticks, Will Travel” series often involve the interweaving of thousands of coffee stir sticks, as well as coffee sleeves and coffee smudges.

 
 

Watch Jonathan Brilliant Repurpose Coffee Sticks & CupsArtFieldsSC.org | 2/13/13

Jonathan Brilliant always thought he’d be a musician. After a failed attempt at music, he decided to pursue art and earned a Studio Art degree from the College of Charleston and Spatial Arts Masters degree from San Jose State University.

 
 

Woven Installation of 60,000 Coffee stirrersjuxtapoz | 1/16/13

An incredible installation by Jonathan Brilliant, and what a name to boot. The North Carolina based artist has created an incredible woven installation piece in the atrium of a building in Sumter, South Carolina, features over 60,000 coffee stirrers. The piece took over 14 days to construct.

 
 

Incredible woven installationMy Modern Met | 1/14/13

Most people don’t think twice about their coffee stirrers once they’ve fulfilled their mixing duties, but artist Jonathan Brilliant has found another purpose for the common wooden sticks. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based artist has constructed numerous spatial art installations over the years that incorporate the coffee stir sticks, perhaps the most eye-fetching of them being The Sumter Piece.

 
 

Jonathan Brilliant is building a wormholeAL.com | 10/2/12

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — It’s hard to tell exactly what artist Jonathan Brilliant is building in the old MedTown Pharmacy location in downtown Birmingham. It looks something like a nest for a bird that travels through space. Or, perhaps, a semi-fragile wormhole.

 
 

Stirrer stick sculpture at Fresno StateABC 30 | 9/14/12

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) – A sculpture soon to be unveiled at Fresno State’s Henry Madden library will amaze visitors who take a closer look.The aptly named Jonathan Brilliant takes items found in a coffee shop and turns them into large works of art. His order’s almost ready at Fresno State.

 
 

Unique Exhibit at Fresno Statecbs 47 | 9/14/12

You can see a unique sculpture at the Maden Library at Fresno State, where sculptor Jonathan Brilliant is working to create a piece of art titled “Woven and Stacked.”

 
 

Jonathan Brilliant featured at Goodall galleryVideo | 2/20/12

Artist Jonathan Brilliant brings his solo exhibition, “Fine Lines, Found Textures, and First Impressions” to the Goodall Gallery. A reception for the artist will be held on March 15.

 
 

Coffee CultureStyle Weekly | 11/8/11

Jonathan Brilliant, recent artist in residence at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, hails from the handwork legacy of coastal South Carolina, but operates with a strong affinity for the British environment artists of the 1970s and ’80s.

Artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, Tony Cragg and Richard Long loosely shared an interest in using the natural environment and its materials to create site-specific installations. Brilliant started out adopting this concept and set off into the woods, using sticks and branches as his early materials, only to discover that the work felt disingenuous. Sitting in a coffee shop one day, he realized that a forest seemed more like a mythological space beyond his everyday life, while the coffee shop and its culture brought him familiarity and comfort.

 
 

Richmond Times-Dispatch | 11/6/11

No question, America has seen its share of interesting pop culture trends in the past decade or so. There’s the birth of reality TV, the death of the CD at the hands of digital music and the rise of the coffee shop as social habitat, for starters.