Designing Mug Art Connects Canada Resident To Hometown Of Plainfield

PLAINFIELD, IL — Ashley Ann Klockenga might reside in a small, snowy town in Ontario, but her art keeps her connected to her hometown of Plainfield and coffee shop patrons throughout Illinois.

If you frequent Krema Coffee House in Plainfield or Lockport, you may have noticed mugs for sale, decorated with buildings and activities symbolic of each town. Klockenga is the artist behind the hometown souvenirs.

The 2005 Plainfield South High School grad lives in Cat Lake First Nation, a reserve northwest of Sioux Lookout in northwestern Ontario. Her family still lives in Plainfield, so she and her family of six return every spring to visit.

"My mom introduced me to Krema Coffee on one of our last trips there," Klockenga told Patch over the phone. "While I was in the area, I got to experience the local coffee scene, and I approached [owner] Kacie [Hollenbeck] with my mug design for Plainfield, and she loved it. She was all ready to go."

What started as a pitch for Plainfield mugs — showcasing the likes of the Opera House along Lockport Street, the DuPage River, a Plainfield Fest banner and a Historic Route 66 sign — expanded to Lockport, where Hollenbeck owns another Krema, and Oswego, where she owns Oak & Bean. Krema also has locations in Tinley Park and North Aurora, both of which also feature Klockenga's designs.

Hollenbeck said working with Klockenga "was an easy decision."

"The entire concept falls in line with our company values of embracing the community we are in, supporting local art, supporting a cause, and of course coffee!" the coffee shop owner wrote to Patch in an email. "This mug embraces every single one of those aspects and Ashley took the time to truly represent each community we are involved in."

The mugs launched at Krema on Nov. 2, just in time for the holiday season, and they were "flying off the shelves," Klockenga said.

"It is an honor to be able to combine my love for local community with my love for visual storytelling and share this excitement with others," she wrote in an email. "Krema Coffee and Oak & Bean are amazing and I am so excited that these shops are home to these mugs. It has been so humbling and surreal to see local reaction."

Klockenga's mug design for Plainfield isn't her first. In fact, her work has been featured on mugs at coffee shops across the Chicagoland area.

The artist has a connection to every place where her mugs are sold. For example, her mugs are sold at Coroco in St. Charles, a city that's "like a second home," and at Gosia in Brookfield, where she was born and raised before moving to Plainfield.

She even has mugs in south Texas, where she and her husband lived during their missionary training, and in Missouri, where the couple has family.

It all started with a love of drawing — "I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil," she said. Klockenga studied visual communication at Northern Illinois University.

"Coffee is the moment where you get to sit and be with your thoughts," Klockenga said, "and we can direct our thoughts one way or another, and just having a mug that can direct our thoughts to memories and cherished moments and appreciation and thankfulness for where we've lived. [It's a] keepsake, a piece of nostalgia that reminds you of the good that's going on in the world."

She designed her first mug for her community in Cat Lake First Nation, where she and her husband work as missionaries. Every year for Christmas, they give gifts to people in the community.

"It's a place unique to any place I've ever lived before. ... We had the idea, my husband and I when we were driving one day, 'Hey, what if we made a mug that depicted all the things that are really special and unique about this place?' Everybody loved it."

At first, Klockenga said she had no intention to sell mugs — "It was totally in the spirit of gift giving," she said.

Fast-forward a year: She and her husband were at the hospital in Sioux Lookout waiting for their fourth baby to be born.

"Since we lived so remotely, we were in a nearby town that we had to fly to that had a hospital," she said. "While you're waiting for a baby to be born, it's already hard, but when you're waiting for a baby to be born, and you're not in your own space, I was feeling really anxious, but I really loved being in Sioux Lookout ... and I started drawing pictures just like I did before, depicting Sioux Lookout, and I put them together, and that was the first mug I approached a coffee shop with."

She and her husband bought 72 mugs featuring her drawings, saying, "We were really nervous." Within 24 hours, what was expected to be a year-long supply sold out.

"I'm super happy that these opportunities are opening up," she said. "I'm not going at it a million miles per hour because I work full time as a missionary, am going to school [for my] master's degree in biblical counseling, and I homeschool my kids. This is still [in the] super passionate-project arena, not full-time-job arena. ... It's a really fun place to channel passion and energy, but I'm still pacing myself."

To hear feedback and further connect to the owners of her mugs, Klockenga and her husband created Facebook pages for each design (See: The Plainfield Mug or The Oswego Mug).

"It's so sweet, connecting to people's hearts, and that people have hearts for Plainfield the way that I do; it's just really cool," she said.