Ehren Tool

WORKSHOPS: WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 7: 1-4PM & THURSDAY NOVEMBER 8: 1-4PM

Cypress College Art Gallery

“I would like my work to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the world. That is a lot to ask of a cup…”

Ehren Tool makes cups that can be cradled in one’s hands, he decorates them with war-related imagery and text, and then gives them away. The artist believes that “the cup is the appropriate scale to talk about war.” With over 16,000 cups gifted to date, he explains that “the best cups I have made are cups that became a touchstone for a vet or someone close to them to talk about unspeakable things.” 

A Marine veteran of the 1991 Gulf War and current Senior Laboratory Mechanician at the Ceramic Department of the University of California, Berkeley; ceramic artist Ehren Tool studied at Pasadena City College, the University of Southern California, and UC Berkeley. His artwork has been exhibited, among other locations, at the Oakland Museum of California; the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles; and the Bellevue Arts Museum, WA. It has recently been acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques Français, and The Ceramics Research Center, Arizona.