VISITING ARTISTS SERIES
“We drink coffee all day long. The question we kept asking was, ‘Where’s the session coffee?’”
Coffee goes well with a lot of things. Like, a lot.
It’s great before a surf. Great after a surf. An excellent choice before a hike, or even after… ok you get the point. Sometimes we just like to drink it all day and it’s a lot easier to do that when it is just slightly less caffeinated. That’s exactly why we decided to team up with our buddy Alimo: to create a half-caff blend that can give you a cool buzz throughout the day, without keeping you too wired into the night.
We’ve worked with Alimo in the past (see our awesome Dodo camp mugs). We’ve always been a huge fan of his art, which is why we kept bothering him, and he finally agreed to be our first partner in the Visiting Artists series of collaborative coffee blends. Alimo wanted a coffee that he could sip all day, and not feel like the jitters were going to take over. Something to keep an even keel, and keep those painting hands steady. After searching for the right combination of beans, we landed on a Mexican-Guatemalan blend that is just what we were looking for…
This is the Alimo Sessions Blend.
VISITOR COFFEE ROASTERS X ALIMO Q&A
What is Alimo?
I am Alimo, and Alimo is me. In its essence, it’s a feeling of creativity.
Alimo started out when I was a 5-year-old rugrat. I used crayons to draw my imagination, inventing weird characters like dinosaurs or weird alien fish I dreamt up. It blew my mind that whatever my imagination was creating, I could use crayons or any other tool to replicate this feeling, whether that was on the hallway wall or on paper my parents supplied me with.
As an early adult, this world of squiggly lines and imagination never really went away. I went to art school to explore my imagination and discover tools to help me express myself. This exploration brought in mediums like painting, sculpture, computers, technology, and design. I still didn’t understand art as a career until I realized what graphic design was, and how computers can help you solve ideas. Once that clicked, my mind exploded.
Post college and primed for adulthood, I decided to defer that program and bought a one-way ticket to Australia and hitchhiked up the East Coast and found myself surfing in Indonesia, all the way to Vietnam where I landed with $2 in my name. It was glorious. My friends’ house I was staying at was a group of kids teaching English, while the house next door was four creatives working agency life around Saigon. They saw me drawing and linked me in with their Creative Directors. That led to illustrating manga characters and drawing up weird Vietnamese typography for the next year.
This creative feeling blossomed my career back to the United States working in the surf and snow industry, along with some big tech companies creating linework for a variety of brands.
These experiences have evolved my style into what we know it today. In its truest form, Alimo is a glimpse into my weird 5-year-old kid self’s imagination and the experiences I’ve had traveling the world. Alimo is a reflection of the past, present and future. It’s a way to pull in the nostalgia of prior memories, and a fantasy to reel in the new, while inspiring folks to get out and explore the world.
When you’re not drinking coffee, what keeps you going?
Ooof, that’s a good question cause I drink coffee all day long bay-bee! I honestly can’t stress that enough though. Not that I’m slamming coffee pots on the reg or anything, but I’m very particular with my coffee drinking. I get my coffee brewed and untouched to the right temperature, then chuck it in my Kinto bottle to basically sip on for hours. It’s basically a lifeline to keep my pulse going. That way I keep that wolverine power ripping through my veins so I don’t mutate back and forth between re-upping my intake. Coffee is life bro!
Outside of coffee, I’m basically drinking smoothies, water, and beer, then repeat. I’m a simple man, what can I say?
To the larger question at hand, what keeps me going? Honestly, it’s my creativity. In a way, it’s a curse. I keep chasing this fantasy and I think most creatives feel this whether they admit it or not. We are on this continuous journey to one-up ourselves from a prior creative project. It’s an endless curiosity of exploring new paths to create anew.
For me, that’s the drive. This ‘curse’ if you will drives me with my activities, such as surfing and snowboarding, painting, and exploring as creative outlets. I then interpret what I consume into the creative work you see today.
When we first chatted about collaborating on a coffee blend, you really wanted to work on a session blend. Why not just decaf or petal-to-the-metal caffeine in your veins?
This idea has been brewing for years and I thank a lot of those conversations to my brother and I being on roadtrips chasing snow. For some reason, we’d always compare beer to coffee. Mainly because that’s our primary liquid diet and we were driving at odd hours.
We’d talk about how beer is tasty, but those dang IPA’s get you slammed off one beer, similar to how some high octane coffee gets you all jittery off one sip. We’d then compare cheap fun beer to being something you can session all day.
We always wondered why coffee didn’t have this comparison. I mean we both drink coffee all day long and session it in a way. Morning time for high octane rocket booster, then afternoon pick me up to keep the pulse going. Only real times I’ve had issues with coffee is if I start a cup at dinner, then I’m shooting myself in the foot. Either way, this bean juice stuff is so good, we prefer to drink it more often than not.
The question we kept asking was, “Where’s the session coffee?”
When I pitched this idea to Visitor Coffee Roasters, they asked, “Why not decaf?” The answer was always simple, “No disrespect to decaf man, but why drink coffee if it’s not gonna do anything to you?”
We wanted a blend that was gonna keep a steady pulse of energy all day, opposed to classic petal-to-the-metal, jittery style.
After a lot of back and forth, trial and errors, the Alimo Sessions Blend was born. It mixes both worlds of fine octane flavor, with a mellow twist of decaf to give you the power to hang out all afternoon without crashing. I love it.
Alimo Sessions Blend
Alimo Sessions Blend
VISITOR COFFEE ROASTERS TEAMED UP WITH ALIMO TO CRAFT A CENTRAL AMERICAN SESSION BLEND WITH HALF THE CAFF FOR A MELLOW BUZZ. LIMITED EDITION OF 100.
You have a lot of art focused around nature. What's your favorite spot?
100%. I have always felt that I am spitting back what I consume. Not necessarily alien creatures I drew younger, but a common language I was sold to when I was a kid. Those times had incredible marketing that was really visual and influenced by skateboarding, surfing, and snowboarding for me.
Those influences carried over into my experiences I live by today. My art is a spitting image of my experiences. Those adventures out in nature are a library of resources for me to pull from. A yin and yang of without one, you don’t get the other.
When I think of a favorite spot in nature, it’s typically deep in Central to South America as I find myself going back year over year to surf and explore. The grandest places I can’t even fully recall (and if I could, prob wouldn’t drop a location pin) as if now they are fantasies and just a memory. A blend of stories that have evolved into an even more epic adventure the more it’s told. It rules.
“This bean juice stuff is so good, we prefer to drink it more often than not.”
—SEAN KESTERSON / ALIMO
What’s your favorite art medium?
I like to blend both the digital and tangible world into one. When I say digital, I mean the internet and what it serves me, along with stories that entertain me, like movies and what not. That endless spider web of social media provides information I’d never know without it. It’s a blessing and a curse.
In real life, I love going into the library or bookstore to see the weird. Each book is a time warp into someone's brain. It’s endless inspiration if you look hard enough.
Outside of the digital world, I’m obsessed with humans and their everyday lives. To me, that is the media that entertains me. I’m always asking myself, “What are they doing, and where are they going?” We're somehow all in the same place, yet all of us are doing something different. That “live cast” media always blows me away thinking we are in the Truman Show. To capture that, I use my sketchbook and watercolors to capture those moments to preserve that media.
Speaking of the digital world. You’re releasing an NFT along with this coffee collaboration. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Over the past year I’ve deep-dived into the web3 world to better understand the technology and benefits of NFTs and how they can help artists. During this time, I’ve dropped a few collections: NFT snow collection and my NFT sketchbook collection that have been super fun.
With this new world, there’s been a big gap between physical and digital pieces. Some projects have introduced perks and memberships into their programs, such as owning this NFT, gets this discount, or ticket into a real life party. Other times, you can buy the digital art for art’s sake because it’s amazing.
For the launch of this artists collaboration between Visitor and Alimo, we wanted to blend the physical with the digital. The physical piece will be this limited (100 qty) Alimo Sessions Blend, along with a t-shirt drop. A portion of the coffee will go to the Alimo community to give away as a perk of owning an Alimo NFT. This helps bridge that digital and physical.
We then wanted to drop the digital painting as an NFT to give homage to the full painting that was created. The coffee bag shows a cropped version of the digital painting, the NFT will show its full image. There will be an edition of 10 available for purchase.
For now, folks collect their NFT that is stored on the blockchain, while others use them in their homes on digital frames to showcase their owned art. The capabilities of these are just beginning and so many cool utilities will come out in the future.
Along with purchasing the NFT, it can help give back to the artists, and if the buyer decides to sell it in the secondary market, Alimo will get 10% of the royalties forever. It also brings in the NFT buyer into the Alimo Community giving access to previews, sneak peeks, pre-orders and giveaways featuring upcoming digital and physical work by Alimo.
Big picture or small, what can humans do on the daily to be more environmentally conscious?
We can do some pretty cool things without getting political and judgemental. End of the day, it’s on us to make this change.
For me, being more environmentally conscious is setting simple habits. Habits for me solve the wildest tasks that seemed hard into subconscious decisions I didn’t realize I did on a daily basis. This can be big or small but recommend using that iPhone to help you. An example could be setting an iCal event that goes off at 7:30 am every day that says ‘shower for 5 min’. That way when you are about to shower, you are conscious of this experience to save water.
Other scenarios could be simple reminders to bring a reusable bag for grocery shopping. If you shop once a week, tag that iCal with a reminder that morning so you are prepped.
The best part is when you forget it, you bring on yourself to remember even more. Habit…check.
Habits go a long way. Give ’er a try.
When it comes to making visual art: music or silence? If so, what music? Also, what silence?
That’s a solid question and I mix it up for the most part. Each morning, I start my day off listening to podcasts just to get things churning in my brain. That can range from a half hour to even a few hours depending on the genre or interview. Those rule.
As the day moves on it slowly changes over to music or nothing at all. That choice really depends on what I’m working on and where I’m at. If I'm at a coffee shop needing to write, I’ll have my headphones on, no music at all playing. That earmuff mentality sends me into this workhorse mode mixed with outside clitter and clatter of the environment. There’s something about that white noise that is comforting for me.
Other times, when I’m painting or drawing on the computer, I'll be so deep into the matrix, anything around me doesn’t exist. Those types of tunes typically have no lyric, deep house, and a repetitive sound that launches me into space. If I can get into that headspace, things really start to happen. I thank the artist Cut Copy on the regular for helping me get into that headspace. Specifically the albu January Tapes and how that spins off into 20 other albums. Def recommend.
Any travel plans or adventures coming up?
This summer has been quite the adventure so far. I’ve bounced from the West Coast to the East Coast for a few projects spanning in NYC and Florida. I’m currently in California and heading back to Oregon in September. Come shoulder season, I need to figure out where home base is going to be. I may head down to Mexico City or Central America for a bit to paint while I organize more larger projects that are in the mix. For now, I’ll be hanging West side enjoying the sun with friends and family.
Last question… How do you brew your coffee?
I love a good French press. That probably stems back to sessioning coffee all day as I can make a big pot of it to enjoy. I also love a classic pour over as it feels more personal, but again I enjoy the large quantity with coffee opposed to an espresso or cortado.
Find more Alimo here:
Website: alimofun.com
Alimo Digital Membership: mint.alimofun.com
NFT snow collection: nft.alimofun.com
Twitter: @alimofun
Discord: @alimofun
Instagram: @alimofun