Why Coconut Zero?

Do you remember the name game? It’s this silly thing that has been going around the internet for years. For example, your spy name would be your favorite season or holiday and your favorite flower. So my spy name would be Autumn Blue Thistle. My action hero name is Ripley Mint Oreo. My witness protection name is Elisabeth Wayne. My goth name is Black Morticia. My stripper name which is my favorite scent and my favorite candy is Coconut Zero! When I opened my Etsy shop in 2010 I had no idea what to name it. The first thing that sprang to mind was my “stripper name.” The rest is history! If I had to rename my shop based on my current favorite scent and candy it would be either Coconut Toblerone, Coconut Assorted Chocolate Truffles, or Coconut Buttered Popcorn Jelly Belly!!

Why all the boobs?

The short answer is that I will always be a 15 year old boy at heart and to put it simply, I LOVE BOOBS!! They’re sexy, life giving, fun, beautiful, powerful, and divine! I’ll start from the beginning for my long answer. When I was a kid I would go to the beach every summer with my family. We would always spend a day going through all the gift shops and there would always be coffee mugs with big titties that said Galveston or Corpus Christi or Port Aransas on the side. When I was around 10 years old I found a box of my Dad’s Easy Rider Magazines hidden in a closet. In case you aren’t familiar, it was just like Playboy Magazine, but with motorcycles. I remember feeling shocked, scandalized, excited, intrigued, and an emotion akin to shame. I knew that what I was looking at was something that should stay hidden. A secret. Most people have this range of emotions when looking at boobs. It makes people excited and uncomfortable. You can’t show your tits on Instagram. If you try to feed your baby in public you’re probably going to piss somebody off. In adolescence I learned that tits were for strip clubs, dirty magazines, and porn. Boobs in advertising were great as long as you didn’t show the nipple. Nipples are obscene! Offensive! Disgusting! It wasn’t always like this. One of the oldest pieces of ceramic Art is the Venus of Willendorf. She was made in 30,000 BCE. She has full breasts and a pregnant belly. She is a goddess. An icon. She is the original divine feminine. Nude women have been a subject of artists since antiquity. They represent beauty, sex, fertility, motherhood, God, love, desire, virginity, and smut. Whatever the symbolism it is unmistakably powerful. There is something about a nude woman in a painting that makes you stop in your tracks. It’s arresting. It draws you in. My boobie mugs are meant to be a celebration of women. The big titty mugs I saw in Galveston were meant to objectify. I mean to empower. There is nothing shameful about a nipple. Every human on this planet has boobs! Don’t you remember the song? “You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals.“ Every one of my boobie mugs is a little different, because every woman is different and beautiful in her own way. I like to make mugs with little boobies, big boobies, lopsided tits, man boobies, and round plastic surgery tits. In the future I would like to celebrate every kind of woman I can think of.  Women who have survived cancer, mothers with tiger stripes, and every shade of the rainbow in LGBTQ!!

Why do you make so many coffee cups?

I drink two cups of coffee every morning. I usually have another cup later in the day. I’m a coffee opportunist. I can appreciate gas station coffee just as much as a latte from a trendy independent coffee shop. At home however, I’m very fancy. My 3 or 4 or 5 cups of coffee a day come from my french press. I put water in my teapot and while it’s boiling I grind my coffee beans fresh. They smell so good when you open the bag. I pour the screaming hot water over the beans and wait for the magic to happen. Five minutes later I pour my first cup of the day. I absolutely love the ritual of it all. It’s so much more satisfying than a K-Cup. After that is the joy of actually drinking the coffee. It’s so important to make time for yourself to sit and enjoy. Stop and smell the roses. Stop and drink the coffee! I love how it’s this little peaceful nugget of time before the usual rush-rush-stress-stress of a typical day. I love to make coffee mugs for people because it just tickles me pink to be an infinitesimal part of that special time of the day!

Agent Dale Cooper said it the best, “I’m going to let you in on a little secret: every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it; don’t wait for it; just let it happen. It could be a new shirt in a men’s store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee.“

What’s with all the doll heads?

There is something majorly creepy about dolls. I’ve always been drawn to & repulsed by how sweet & sinister they are. They are both pure happy childhood nostalgia & the worst thing you could find staring at you in a darkened room at night. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with dolls my whole life. I always had Barbies. I could never figure out how to put clothes on them, so they were always naked. That explains a few things about me. Lol! I had Cabbage Patch Kids, a Rainbow Brite doll, and Strawberry Shortcake. I loved them dearly. However, every once in a while I’d get a dreaded porcelain doll for Christmas or my birthday. I always acted very grateful and then I shoved them in the back of my closet. I hated those dolls. You weren’t supposed to play with them. You had to put them on a shelf and admire them from afar. What was the point? I finally found functionality for porcelain dolls in 2013 when I made my first doll head night-light. It’s pretty fun to deconstruct a doll, rip off its wig and skull cap, pop out its eyes, remove the head from the body and fill the head with candle wax or a light fixture. It feeds my need for creation and destruction. My favorite thing to make are the Siamese Twin art dolls. I love hunting for dolls in antique stores and resale shops, finding two sisters that belong together, and sewing them together for eternity! I think they are so strange and beautiful. If you’re interested in reading about real life Siamese Twins I suggest reading “The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton“ by Dean Jensen. They led such fascinating and tragic lives.