Handmade Art You Can Use Everyday
Special thanks to Ceramics TECHNICAL magazine for publishing an awesome pottery article written by author Marissa Deml! Marissa and I worked together last year and came up with the idea to create “Cosmic Mugs.” As a Marketing Intern, her final project was to write and submit an article to a professional publication. Thanks to her skills as an author, our work got published! You can read her four page article below, and also purchase a hard copy of Ceramics TECHNICAL here.
These “Cosmic Mugs” are largely inspired by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City (in the video, he’s the guy on my shirt). In his article titled, “The Universe As A Muse” Dr. Tyson said:
“Like the religious and mythological sources that so influenced art before and during the Renaissance, countless artists today are moved by the need to capture the cosmos—on film, in dance, and on canvas.”
Here is a video I made about how the cosmos influences my pottery. Enjoy!
Cosmic Mugs: Pottery Inspired by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope
After creating my newest body of artwork, “Cosmic Mugs” with glazes inspired by images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, I find myself asking, “Why?” Why try to show huge galaxies and nebulae on a small mug? I turned to mainstream science advocate Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson for guidance. During the Origins Project at Arizona State University, Dr. Tyson critiqued an iconic painting by Vincent van Gogh: The Starry Night.
“I want and I need the artist to take me to new places, and the new place van Gogh took me is not the sky as it is, but the sky as he felt it. And the more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.”
Unlike a painting or sculpture, pottery mugs are meant to be touched, picked up and brought to the mouth and nose. How many other types of artwork do you actually touch with such intimate parts of your body? I want my “Cosmic Mugs” to communicate beauty like a van Gogh painting, while deeply engaging multiple senses. Why does art that hangs on a wall deserve more value than art that holds coffee or tea? I make these “Cosmic Mugs” to challenge that notion by letting people experience fine art in daily life.
How many brush strokes are in a van Gogh painting? Thousands and thousands! How do my simple coffee mugs relate when they have only a few brush strokes?
Complexity is revealed in the kiln firing. Raw earth metals like iron, copper and cobalt are mixed with water and brushed onto the pot. Massive energy is needed to fire each pot to 2400 degrees F, melting glaze chemicals together into a hard, glassy surface. I give up control, letting the kiln melt glazes into an abstract painting that I can never fully predict.
Will my glazes ever compare to the complexity of a Hubble image? This photo of the Andromeda galaxy has 1.5 billion pixels and you would need 600 HD TV screens to see the true photo!
Looking closely at each pottery mug gives us a deeper understand of how Hubble images manifest as abstract glaze paintings. It shouldn’t look identical, but it should feel similar.
Cosmic Mugs are…
We can look closely with detail shots, extreme zooms, and even a microscope to get a better understanding of the subtle textures that can’t be seen with the naked eye.
Even simply enjoying a cup of coffee outdoors in bright sunlight can reveal new subtleties.
Hubble images are free for anyone to use in the public domain, as long as proper credit is given. I sent a mug to the Space Telescope Science Institute as a thanks for freely providing such beautiful images, and hopefully to build bridges between art & science. 
Stay tuned for just a few new jewels popping up in my online store in the coming months!
Thanks for reading! Check out my Instagram to stay updated with my newest pottery:
This is the seventh post in a series entitled, “A Potter’s Journey” for American Craft Council’s website. This post tells the story of growing my pottery businesss with the help of a mutually beneficial partnership with a local coffee shop, the Local Blend:
“A Potter’s Journey: The Local Blend Business Partnership”
This is the sixth post in a series entitled, “A Potter’s Journey” for American Craft Council’s website. This post tells the story of growing my pottery business into a profitable livelihood:
“A Potter’s Journey: Growing a Profitable Pottery Business”
