UC Berkeley Press Release

Profile of artist Ehren Tool

By Noel Gallagher, Media Relations | 28 October 2004

BERKELEY – In a handmade camouflage apron and with a head full of memories from the first Gulf War, University of California, Berkeley, graduate student Ehren Tool creates works of ceramic art that seem both a penance and a plea for understanding the impact of war.

Tool's ceramic cups are his signature work. He has given away more than 4,000 of the cups, which are decorated with press molds of military medals, bombs, or babies, their bottom edges etched like sandbags.

A profile of this former U.S. Marine who will graduate in May with his Master of Fine Arts degree can be found at the UC Berkeley NewsCenter at https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/10/27_tool.shtml. It was written by Bonnie Powell of the UC Berkeley Public Affairs' Web team.

A sample of Tool's work will be on view through Nov. 18 at the ASUC Art Studio Gallery, on the lower level of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union. Tool will give away 100 cups at a closing reception on Nov. 18 from 5-7 p.m.

Tool's art work also includes:
* "Letter" - Tool mailed letters and cups to more than 50 government officials and prominent private citizens around the world. This work includes letters, photographs of the cups he sent and any response. China refused his package, but the Secretary of the Navy said that he would display the cup next to his sign-in sheet at the Pentagon.
* "393" - Commemorating the number of U.S. combat deaths the first year of the Iraq war, Tool made and decorated 393 ceramic cups by hand - then shot each of them with a pellet gun and videotaped it shattering. Each set of fragments is display on its own base in front of a video of the destruction of the cups.