A New York artist is on his way from the southwest-Colombian Huila department to his home town to display a collection of paintings he made of the coffee production process in one of Colombia’s renowned coffee regions.
Steven Weinberg, a painter and fanatic coffee-drinker, went to Huila to produce watercolor paintings that will be displayed in a Brooklyn coffee shop in August.
U.S. Coffee roaster Grumpy sent the New-Yorker to the tiny village of Gigante, Huila to portray how the coffee was grown, picked and dried, before being sent north for roasting and consumption.
Weinberg was picked up from Gigante’s bus stop by the local coffee trader, an employer of coffee exporter Virmax, who had arranged a place for him to stay, the painter told Colombia Reports.
“Basically this meant we stayed in his home with his wife and three children. We were offered the room of his eldest daughter, which was full of teddy bears,” Weinberg said.
From their teddy bear and Jesus statue-filled home, the coffee farmer Jose Lizardo Olivera showed Weinberg and his girlfriend the whole process and the New-Yorker did what he does best; documenting the people and the places he was shown.
In the three days Weinberg was in the coffee region, he painted dozens of paintings and an awual amount of cartoons about his adventures.
The watercolor paintings will be exhibited at one of Grumpy’s coffee shops in Brooklyn, NY from August 4.