Tall Coffee

How a whimsical public artist turned Granville business owner wants to bring the world’s largest coffee cup sculpture to Ohio

By Jack McLaughlin / Photos courtesy of Ryan McGuire

Your version of a tall cup of coffee is not the same as that of Columbus artist and business owner Ryan McGuire. In fact, it’s not even close.

McGuire, who serves as the co-owner of Bella’s Beans in Granville, also happens to be a public artist with decades of weird and wonderful experience. Previous projects include an undeniably-cute robot sculpture created using the negative space in the doorway of a long-standing Iowa City building and “Side of Eggs,” a 9-foot by 8-foot fried egg sculpture tactfully affixed to the side of a hotel in Grinnell, Iowa.

An Ithaca, New York native, McGuire and his wife Susan Villareal relocated to the Columbus area several years ago after Villareal landed a job as a professor at Granville’s Denison University.

So if you’ve noticed a refurbished Granville phone booth that replays positive messages after you pick up the phone, a giant banana, or a truck converted into a huge, brightly-spotted reptile, then you’re familiar with his work.

His next project, though, will be his biggest yet. Literally.

While many of the details have yet to be determined, McGuire hopes to create the world’s largest coffee cup sculpture, right here in Ohio.

“When it comes to creating massive oddities, you don't just settle for big; you go for the gold and aim for the world record,” he said.

The co-owner of Bella’s Beans in Granville, he’s hoping to merge his artistic career with his business venture by a statement that—quite literally—cannot be missed.

McGuire, a self-taught artist with a knack for figuring out how to make things work, hopes to put his skills to use with the massive sculpture Currently, it’s unclear where exactly it will go: Bella’s is located at 820 W. Broadway in Granville, but McGuire hasn’t narrowed much down yet, other than the fact that he wants it to be in the Buckeye State.

“We know it will be an Ohio attraction, but the exact location is up in the air. We've considered putting it on Intel's campus, but we're not sure they're ready for that kind of caffeine-fueled chaos,” he said.

While the locale (and also funding) are right now undetermined, that doesn’t phase the endlessly whimsical and optimistic Granville artist.

Take, for example, a previous project in his native New York, where he found a way to convince 50 friends to take photos in Groucho Marx disguises (the classic glasses and mustache), and then turned these photos into banners. And what do you do with 50 photos of friends disguised as Groucho Marx? You convince your local library to line the outside of their building with them, of course.

In case you haven’t guessed by now, that’s exactly what McGuire did in a project called “I Look Silly,” which adorned the Tompkins County Public Library in the summer of 2014. And he did so without selling anything, and without making money for himself (outside of working with the library to have them cover the cost of production).

“I don’t really sell my art, I just give it away,” he said.

In fact, McGuire noted he enjoys the process of figuring out a project as much or more than admiring the finished art object.

“I love trying to figure out the engineering components, that’s what drives me to create. It’s been in my nature, my parents went bankrupt and we were always trying to figure out savvy ways to make things fun. I’m kind of MacGyverish like that now,” he said. “I’m more driven by the challenge,”

With his giant cup of coffee, McGuire most definitely has a challenge in front of him.

He sees the sculpture standing 18 to 20 feet tall (roughly the height of a two-story home), with a diameter of 25 feet. He believes a ferro-cement technique, laying a metal mesh over an armature and coating in mortar to be his best bet, although we’re not entirely sure what all of that means.

But we do know this: The local artist has never been one to stand down from these types of challenges. And central Ohio should be ready for what he has percolating.

“We have the potential to do something downright ridiculous and be celebrated for it, and this is why, I think a Goonie said, ‘childhood dreams of being record-breakers never die,’” McGuire said.

To see more of Ryan's work visit: mcguiremade.com