Ask any Vancouverite their go-to spots for coffee and Nemesis Coffee will probably be mentioned. The café now boasts five outlets in Metro Vancouver, with the newest one situated in Coquitlam. The nearest Nemesis is about a 30-minute commute from my place, but hey, the sun is out and I have yet to fully explore Coquitlam, so adding another hour to my commuting time is no big deal (it totally was, I was wiped out by the time I got home).

The new café is sleek and chic much like its other locations, but the thing that caught my eye instantly was the cup used for hot drinks. These weren’t the usual glass cups or mugs—no, hot drinks were now housed in beautiful ceramic cups with a unique pentagon-shaped base.

Take a peep at the bottom and you’ll find a small heart and the word “tasa” stamped into the cup. Curious about the maker, I searched up “Tasa cups Nemesis,” and artist Selena Barcenas popped up.

Keep kneading

Selena Barcenas, artist and founder of Tasa, has been working with clay for six years. Previously, she was working full-time in architecture while studying part-time toward licensure, but stepped away after experiencing burnout.

“As much as I really loved the process of design and architecture, it also took over my life,” she tells me. “And so I forgot to do everything else that I truly enjoyed.”

After leaving architecture, Barcenas took this time to reconnect with her creativity, initially through her love of dance. Coming from a Filipino heritage, she describes dance and music as her most accessible art forms growing up. While dance had been a performance-centric part of her family celebrations, her return to it in 2019 saw the art become more of a personal expression.

“It feels very sacred, being able to express through my body,” Barcenas explains.

During this period of time, Barcenas went for her very first pottery workshop, and there was an instant connection. Seeing her ideas take shape almost instantaneously reinvigorated her creative process and, despite producing her fair share of broken ashtrays and lopsided trinket dishes, she kept at it. This new passion led her to enrol in the visual arts program at Emily Carr, where she also experimented with other mediums including printmaking and painting.

How does one ‘dance clay’?

On paper, dance and pottery might seem worlds apart—a thought Barcenas wrestled with as a student. During her senior year at Emily Carr, she worked on uniting these art forms and found that their connection stems from tactility.

“Most of the time, dance comes from a feeling,” she explains. “And I think that clay is the same. You gotta work with it and feel its qualities so that you can shape it in a way that you envision.”

This desire to blend the arts culminated in her graduation project: letters to her. This took form in a time-based installation and performance showcasing ceramic vessels surrounded with clay slip writings. The work delved into Barcenas’ childhood memories and the ongoing process of reconstructing her inner landscapes, revealing the connection between memory, migration and the capacity for healing.

“I think I resisted combining dance into my actual ceramic practice,” Barcenas admits. “So the grad show was a breakthrough for me because I was asking myself, ‘Why am I not doing more of what feels natural for me, which is dance?’”

Fire up the kiln

Now graduated, Barcenas has launched Tasa as a reminder of her motivations for returning to the creative world: to nurture her connection to art on a daily basis. The word tasa means cup in Tagalog, and also embodies the idea of self-nourishment. 

“It’s something you need to intentionally make space for yourself and nurture so that you keep that connection,” she explains. “I’ve learned personally from past experience just how important it is for my own mental health and well-being to continue that connection.”

Tasa’s collection currently consists of the Tasa cup and saucer, glazed in two different colours: a deep green and an off-white with specks of green and brown. The swatches are aptly named pandan and buko respectively, paying homage to ingredients often used in Filipino cuisine.

Alongside creating her own drinkware, Barcenas also wanted to design a collection of cups for baristas. This collaboration with Nemesis Coffee came about after a chat with a friend who worked there, and having frequented Nemesis’ Great Northern Way (GNW) location during her time at Emily Carr, the collaboration felt natural.

Anyone who’s visited the GNW outlet will know that it boasts an impressive ceiling installation comprising wooden panels extending from a pentagon-shaped core. That same pattern is reflected in the foot (that’s artist speak for the base of a cup) of Barcenas’ cups for Nemesis.

“I wanted to explore how the repetition of lines and curves could be translated into [a cup],” she says. “With the [pottery] wheel, anything you make becomes very symmetrical. So I thought that altering the foot would be a good way to extend the lines into the form.”

This little detail resulted in a cup that’s more tactile and ergonomically friendly—providing better grip and protecting your fingers when the drink is hot. As your beverage cools, your hands naturally cradle the cup, making for a satisfying handfeel.

Now, a hundred of these handmade cups are in use at Nemesis’ Coquitlam outlet, with another 30 are located at their new bakery, Dope Bakehouse, in North Vancouver.

Time to glaze

Barcenas hints at an upcoming Tasa collection featuring bowls, inspired by a recent visit to her sister in Edmonton.

“She still has one of the bowls I made her from a couple years ago. She uses it everyday because apparently it’s just such a practical and useful shape, ” Barcenas says. “Bowls are great because you can use them for a lot of things.”

Besides a new collection, she also says that she would love to continue collaborating with others in the future, but more importantly, she wants to continue creating works that she loves.

“I hope to continue creating from a place of joy and curiosity,” she shares. “I just love making stuff, so I’d love to continue to have that freedom and build that capacity to share with others.”

Check out Selena Barcenas and Tasa Ceramics here.