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I have, coincidentally, come across several artists working with coffee-related objects in the past two weeks. First Christian Ducharme’s cool lamps, then Matthew Parker’s coffee filter window installation, and now Jonathan Brilliant’s incredible coffee stir sticks installations. Totally living up to his name, Brilliant creates enormous, and amorphous,  site-specific installations using thousands of coffee stir sticks woven in place and held together only by tension! This series of installations is collectively known as Have Sticks Will Travel. Brilliant likes to activate the gallery space as part of the work, usually creating the work onsite hoping to dissolve the boundary between the space where the art is created and displayed.

In addition to using the coffee stir sticks, Jonathan Brilliant utilizes the coffee cup sleeves to create the tube formations, as well as the coffee cup covers for yet other, wall-mounted, works.

Living and working in Columbia, South Carolina Brilliant started working with these materials in 2006 with his Goldsworthy of the Coffee Shop Project, taking his cue from the British artist Andy Goldsworthy who gathers materials from his natural environment and uses them in his site-specific installations. Brilliant’s natural environment? The coffee shop, of course, with the take-out coffee cup and all its accessories!

For the Have Sticks Will Travel World Tour, Jonathan created multiple installations, entirely in situ, during the course of 8 to 10 days at each location. You can watch the video below for a sample installation.

You can see more of Brilliant’s amazing work on his website.