Coffee Painting by Any Other Name is now Arfé

Arfé has been defined as the creation of artworks by staining with coffee.

It has been written that this term may have been coined by the Puerto Rican artist, Francisco Rivera Rosa, to describe his coffee painting technique. The word seems to have come from a combination of words art and café. This would makes Arfé a portmanteau.

Vocabulary word for the day: A portmanteau (plural: portmanteaus or portmanteaux) is a term in linguistics that refers to a word or morpheme that fuses two or more grammatical functions. A folk usage of portmanteau refers to a word that is formed by combining both sounds and meanings from two or more words. In linguistics, these false portmanteaux are called blends.

This information was derived from Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that is publicly edited and the reviewed for accuracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arf%C3%A9

After reading the article, which is paraphrased above and then reading the discussion on the article I have questions as to whether this definition is real. My opinion on it is that even if it wasn’t real to begin with, I’m going to make it real now. I’m going to start using this word to describe my work just for fun.

Another interesting this is that I have done several searches to find Francisco Rivera Rosa online (Google & MSN) to no avail. I may have to take a look at some art history books. I feel I should know this name but I can’t seem to place him. More later. If anyone has any information on him please contact me.

To view some coffee art, please feel free to visit my web site http://www.nosuchanimal.net

Ezju