Sip On This

2025 BFA Capstone

Sip On This is a feminist design project that transforms mugs into vessels of resistance, reflection, and empowerment. By transferring digitally designed, screen-printed imagery onto hand-crafted ceramics, the project brings feminist discourse into the hands of those who use it daily. Rooted in the belief that feminism is both collective and deeply personal, Sip On This uses the daily ritual of drinking from a mug as moments for conscious reflection and conversation around gender, power, and voice. It challenges the boundaries between art, design, and activism by using utility as a platform for emotional connection and social commentary. The project centers women’s lived experiences and explores the role of design in fostering community, plurality, and daily activism. Through material exploration, user research, literature review, and self-ethnography, this work reclaims everyday objects as tools for disruption, ensuring that feminist thought is not just seen, but used, felt, and remembered.

The Project

The Process

Process Highlights

Discovered the possibility of transferring screen prints onto ceramics and chose this technique as the foundation of the project. This decision allowed me to merge my core interests: design, printmaking, and ceramics.
Learned how to screen print with underglaze and apply transfers to bone-dry ceramic forms.
Embraced feminism as the central theme and message of the project.
Developed the visual style of the project and created collage-based imagery that reflected feminist themes.
Threw and tested initial mugs, experimenting with form, surface, and image transfer techniques.
Conducted a poll on preferred mug shapes, sizes, and handle designs based on community feedback. To do this, I threw a variety of mugs in different shapes and with different handle forms, selected four, and surveyed individuals about their preferences.
Engaged deeply with feminist literature, especially The Feminist Designer, to gather inspiration and insight, connecting theory to lived experience and visual storytelling. This research also prompted meaningful personal reflection.
Realized the imagery needed a whiter background than raw cone 6 stoneware could provide. Attempted to solve this by mixing a bisque-friendly white slip, which unfortunately did not work and cracked under clear glaze.
Presented my project concept and process at the BFA proposal party and received valuable feedback on my project as a whole and specifically asked for feedback on the title and logo.
Shifted my exhibition design strategy (with input from my ceramics professor) to have each mug form part of a larger, connected image. This meant that mugs needed to be identical.
Faced challenges in throwing identical mugs, which led to exploring slip casting for uniformity.
Threw multiple mug forms to find the ideal one for molding. Created a one-part plaster mold, mixed a cone 6 slip, developed a clay body compatible with the slip, and crafted press molds to produce uniform handles.
Encountered issues with fragility in the new clay body, as pieces broke easily in both greenware and bisqued stages. Adapted the transfer method so ink could properly soak into the bisqued surface.
Designed and built custom display shelving in the woodshop through trial and error. After an earlier critique, the main shelf design was altered to be more open, allowing sides of the mugs to be seen. I also built an additional shelf, that was originally designed to be a table but changed later on, to old additional mugs, stickers, and business cars. The shelves were finished with Danish oil to highlight the natural wood grain.
Designed a project logo combining a mug, the Venus symbol, and the title Sip On This. This logo appeared on the bottom of each mug, on stickers, and on the final project poster.
Experienced a kiln mishap (one plug had been removed) leading to uneven firing and warping. After attempting remakes that didn’t match, I chose to use the original warped mugs.
Designed a poster highlighting my project’s three core values: feminism, community, and daily activism. For this poster, I used a custom typeface I created in the letterpress studio.
Produced stickers of my project logo for exhibition collateral. After discovering I couldn’t use the sticker paper with the Silhouette machine, I cut each sticker by hand.
Installed my exhibition in the Hiestand Gallery but felt dissatisfied with its visual impact. After gathering feedback, I designed a large gray textured backdrop to add contrast between the mugs and the wall.
Took down the full display, installed the new backdrop, and reinstalled everything, resulting in a final presentation I was proud of.
Screen printed business cards and displayed them in one of the mugs on the half-circle shelf.
Photographed the exhibition, documenting the final installation and people interacting with the mugs.