Neil Powell turns phrases from conversations heard in bars, cafes and on the street into slogans on mugs
ENLARGE
Maybe it has something to do with the advent of the cellphone and the Internet. A blurring between the public and private self. A tendency, because of social media and websites such as Twitter and Facebook,for people to live their lives out loud.
But a while back I thought I should carry around a notebook to record the humorous, angry, heart-rending, inappropriate comments I heard people make on the street—either to their physical companions, or to whomever they were complaining, or fighting with, at the other end of their devices.
I never mustered the initiative to invest in that notebook. But Neil Powell, a Tribeca designer and artist, did. “A couple of years ago I started jotting them down in these little notebooks,” he explained, as he showed me his sketches and scribbles.
But mostly they were as fodder for his art, some of which he creates from things like discarded book covers. People’s conversations probably seemed like just another piece of society’s detritus, eventually to be repurposed.
“I realized I was capturing a little of our own popular culture,” the artist said.
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It was Sloane Humphrey, a friend and a public-relations executive, who came up with the idea to put the artist’s transcriptions on mugs, and in his own lighthearted calligraphy. They started Mugnacious, selling the mugs at mugnacious.com.
Ms. Humphrey unconsciously contributed a gem or two of her own. “I texted Neil, ‘I’m Ubering to Soul Cycle,’ and he turned it into the phrase, ‘I Uber to the gym.’ Which is one of our most popular mugs,” Ms. Humphrey said.
Mr. Powell cites artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and Edward Ruscha as influences, but in his receptacles I also see the influence of Jenny Holzer and her electronic displays.
He seems in the tradition of SoHo and Tribeca artists of an earlier era. He spends a lot of time hanging out at local bars, both espresso and liquor, which lend themselves to the subtle art of eavesdropping.
ENLARGE“Karma owes me one,” arose from a conversation he heard about a year ago as he was sitting outside Ground Support, a cafe on West Broadway.
One young woman was complaining to another about her bad luck with men, Mr. Powell remembered. “And she said, just as they walked by, ‘I know one thing—karma owes me one.’ And I thought, ‘Don’t we all feel like that?’ ”
The artist prefers bars for their opportunities at effortless auditory voyeurism. “I don’t put pressure on myself to hear these things,” he explained. “In a bar people are letting go. They’re less inhibited.”
That wasn’t necessarily the case with “I’m glad we had this chat.” The mug-able sentiment arose from a tense discussion Mr. Powell overhead between a boss and her employee as he was sitting at the bar of Westville, a restaurant on Hudson Street.
“When they left it seemed not much had gotten resolved,” the artist recalled. “The boss said, ‘I’m glad we had this chat,’ and I’m thinking, ‘Neither of them are glad they had this chat.’ ”
Our conversation inevitably turned to overused words and catchphrases that one can’t wait to recede into history—curate, granular, deep dive.
TV also serves as mug fodder. “Crackpot with an ax to grind,” arose from an episode of NBC’s “Dateline,” though my impression is that could describe pretty much any crime segment on “Dateline.”
ENLARGEPerhaps my favorite, for reasons I can’t quite explain, is “Get a job. Learn to dance. Be more social.”
“That was very personal,” admitted Mr. Powell, who was returning to the city and his wife after a sojourn upstate. “That is what she said to me, ‘Be more social.’
“She always hated that I didn’t really like to dance,” he went on. “Those are the three things I need to do rather quickly.”
Apparently, not quickly enough. The couple are divorced.
Ms. Humphrey said mug sales are strong. Even though the marketing budget is approximately zero. Perhaps appropriately, most of their word-of-mouth is generated through social media.
A mug that seems to resonate with many in our age of faux exceptionalism is “What I lack in talent, I make up for with arrogance.”
Mr. Powell heard that while he was seated at the end of the bar at Toad Hall on Grand Street.
“I feel like that, too,” he said.
Write to Ralph Gardner Jr. at ralph.gardner@wsj.com