Food Art

Meet the Creative Genius Who Turns Starbucks Cups Into Art

Lean in, siren.
Lean in, siren. Photo: Soo Min Kim

The green Starbucks cup logo and check boxes are so unexceptionally mundane these days that you might as well be staring at a blank canvas. That’s probably how Soo Min Kim, a self-described “paper cup artist” in Seoul who’s exhibited roomfuls of hanging cup mobiles, saw it a few years ago when he started morphing Sirens by the hundreds into Thomas the Tank Engines, PSYs, Colonel Sanders clones, Beatles album covers, Lego minifigures, anime characters, cat burglars, superheroes, and too many other things to count.

He’s filmed the process, which begins with an unadorned cup — a tall, generally, by the looks of it — that he paints white except for the Siren, before doodling on a new scene in green marker. They’ve gotten so elaborate that several now sport light bulbs and giants cutouts, basically little 3-D Siren dioramas.

Here’s a sampling from the Kim oeuvre posted to his blog and Facebook page:

"Tho-bucks."
“Tho-bucks.” Photo: Soo Min Kim/Facebook

Paul is not dead, he's just decaf.
Paul is not dead, he’s just decaf. Photo: Soo Min Kim/Facebook

Topkapi-bucks.
Topkapi-bucks. Photo: Soo Min Kim/Facebook

Facebook itself.
Facebook itself. Photo: Soo Min Kim/Facebook

Mermaid as ebola patient.
Mermaid as ebola patient. Photo: Soo Min Kim/Facebook

Non-shrugging Alas.
Non-shrugging Alas. Photo: Soo Min Kim/Facebook

Get-this-mermaid-girl-off-me-please.
Get-this-mermaid-girl-off-me-please. Photo: Soo Min Kim/Facebook

Totally wrong franchise.
Totally wrong franchise. Photo: Soo Min Kim/Facebook

Combination Starbucks and Pizza Hut.
Combination Starbucks and Pizza Hut. Photo: Soo Min Kim/Facebook


[Official blog, Facebook, RocketNews24]

Meet the Creative Genius Who Turns Starbucks Cups Into Art