At Fulcrum, we value creative collaborations. Meet the artist behind our limited-edition coffee tin design, arriving just in time for the holidays.
Brian Alfred is a painter, multi-media artist, podcaster and educator working from his home base in Brooklyn. He had dreamed of becoming a doctor before he fell in love with painting and swapped pre-med classes for an art major in college. Today, he combines his passion for collage, animation, painting and storytelling into evocative works that grace the inside walls of galleries, the outside walls of urban buildings, the covers of journals and, now, a specialty coffee tin from Fulcrum.
We discovered his work while searching for a large piece to fill the wall of our Belltown flagship cafe location. We were drawn to Brian’s giant mural of a graphic, expansive landscape that could have come from our own backyard. Shades of green reach toward distant blue mountains that fade into a gray-blue atmosphere. It was a familiar view, and we hoped it would pull that feeling of northwest nature into our urban café. We reached out to Brian to let him know how much we appreciated his work.
That contact sparked an interest in the brand for Brian. Like many of us, he was already a huge fan of coffee, so discovering a new brand from Seattle interested him. Fortunately, he was impressed with our work as well, and inspired to collaborate. He researched the origin of the beans and found inspiration in the land of coffee farms, similar and yet unique from the landscapes in his portfolio. He dove into the world of our coffee farmers, the lush green fields surrounded by forests and volcanoes. “My image was born from those landscapes with an eye to place the viewer in a perspective of standing before the vast, sublime landscape. The majestic view matches the complex and earthy flavor of the coffee. I would like the viewer to be taken away to the place where the flavor begins.”
That goal perfectly aligns with our own desire to create connections between the farmers in remote and distant parts of the world, and the coffee lovers in our own backyard. Coffee is a global community and, done right, it can bring all people together.
Limited Edition tin and coffee are no longer available.
