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Coffee Stories

Aurora Thomo

By 13th October 2022December 13th, 2022No Comments6 min read

Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life (Oscar Wilde). What about Coffee? What about the gentle strokes in brewing and the emotional feelings that coffee brings? Is Art, Coffee? Or Coffee, Art? This is Aurora Thomo’s story.

Aurora Thomo

Aurora Thomo and her The Golden Bean project

This is the story of Aurora Thomo, a full-time coffee artist from Italy who combines her passion for art and love for coffee. She chose the coffee scene out of passion and work, as she believes:

 

“The work of an artist has no timetable. I’m always engaged between the inspiration and the realization of the work. In the evening, when my mind should relax, it is more busy thinking and planning.”

 

Aurora has been actively part of the coffee scene since she was nineteen. Her earliest encounter with “the scented drink reserved for adults only” was at five, when her grandmother gave her a taste and she “secretly savored its pungent aroma and strong, bitter taste.” It was not until she left school and started working and training as a barista in a cafeteria that she found a connection between her love for coffee and art.

 

Over time, she made sure to find a balance between her coffee (work) and her art (passion), and it brings her immense joy whenever she finds the right spot to mix both of them on one canvas or art piece. She loves it when her artworks take full shape and adequately express her intentions at the start of the artwork.

 

She may never have reached her current height if she had never paid due diligence to her craft. Aurora took a specialty roasting course in Guarcino at the Campetelli Cafè roasting company. It was here that she shared an Ethiopian Sidamo Guji, one of her most memorable coffee cups to date. She is keen on giving back to the coffee community as she believes:

Aurora Thomo

Aurora Thomo’s coffee art

“My contribution to the community is to bring it closer to the world of coffee, a way of people, lands, and people that goes beyond a cup.”

 

Aurora may think long and hard before coming up with her medium of expression, and once she gets it, she begins work. She infuses life and living into her artwork, and hopes that it gets transmitted to everyone that comes across it. As long as she believes in what she’s doing, nobody can pull her down. This drive flows into what success means to her –  selling her paintings, being able to collaborate with people, and receiving positive feedback are just a few of her notable points for success.

 

She has always been curious since childhood, which has opened multiple doors and made her wonder what she could do with coffee, even outside the brewing and drinking scope. This led her to the Golden Bean project.

 

We gave her the opportunity to introduce this one-of-a-kind king-sized project.

 

Aurora Thomo:

The Golden Bean is a project born from the heartfelt desire to share my work that combines, in an original way, the passion for art and for the world of coffee with all the values and meaning it embodies. A coffee bean that has the power to relate to and connect every country around the world, going beyond language, culture, and religion. A meeting between different people and stories, with the aim of making us all the same and unique over a cup of coffee. Undoubtedly, coffee has become part of the customs of all people on earth, becoming a ritual of sociality, reconciliation, and union between people. From the plant to the bean to the cup, coffee makes us live an experience that involves millions of people every day, bringing with it an atmosphere of conviviality, pleasure, friendship, intimacy, and exchange of ideas, customs, rituals, and tastes.

Aurora Thomo coffee

Aurora Thomo and her The Golden Bean project

The Golden Bean is made with coffee beans from two single origins: Arabica Alta Mogiana (Brazil) and Robusta Kapy Royal (India), with their different shapes and shades, as are the lands in which they were grown and from which they have captured aromas, intensity, and colors. The groove is defined as a 24-carat pure gold leaf, a precious and unalterable element that has adorned every form of beauty in the history of human creativity, and is capable of transmitting warmth, movement, and strength. It represents the heart and soul of the bean, which, by sprouting, gives a new life. The beans have been applied with care and passion, as if they were a mosaic that is made up of time and patience, where each bean has its place and its importance, just like every single person in the world.

 

I picked up each bean one by one and understood its shape, roundness, roughness, colors, shades, aroma, and weight. The passage of time has marked the choice of each bean, identifying the right place for each to make it a single work of art that could speak to the world that it wants to represent. We are those beans, unique, original, and unrepeatable, with our precise place in the world, in time, and in history.

 

“From coffee, to wood, to canvas.”

As part of the coffee community, I’MNAB supports coffee artists and is proud of everyone that is, in little ways, helping the coffee community and, most especially, baristas.

 

Aurora noted the growth of the coffee scene as people are more interested in where their coffee comes from and what they drink. In her off time, she loves reading, doing activities like running and wakeboarding, and listening to opera, pop, and rock music. Her signing-out advice:

 

“Follow your dreams and always believe in them.”

Oluwatobifunmi Olaniran

Take a bow! You got to this section! I'm an author at I'M NOT A BARISTA, a Creative Writer and Electrical Engineer from Nigeria. "I laugh in the face of danger." -Simba