The reason why I make pottery is to enrich people’s lives. The things we surround ourselves with matter. Useful art inspired by our place in the world and in the universe has the power to impact society. These “asteroid cups” and “mountain cups” are examples of our new pottery:
One week from today you will be able to purchase any new pottery in our new online store (COMING SOON). Thanks to photography by Julia Eckart, a gorgeous new body of artwork will be available globally. Stay tuned to this email newsletter to be the first to know when pots are available, as well as to receivediscount couponson certain styles of pottery next Monday, April 11th at noon CST.
Thank you to everyone who entered the live Cosmic Mug Giveaway! Next Wednesday 10/4, ten lucky winners will have an email in their inbox for a Cosmic Mug to be shipped almost anywhere in the world, totally free!
These mugs are very difficult to create, but I successfully made a bit batch and can afford to give them away for just one more week. The giveaway program increases your chances of winning by referrals to friends and family who might get a kick out of getting their own entry to win a Cosmic Mug. Good luck!
In less than two weeks, I will have a HUGE batch of Cosmic Mugs available at far lower prices on Kickstarter! Watch closely for the next couple email newsletters so you can snag one before they sell out.
Studio Shot
Pottery glaze transforms in the kiln firing by being heated to 2400 degrees F.
“In the case of the artist, I don’t want them to represent reality because I have that via my own telescope. I want and I need the artist to take me to new places.”
Vincent van Gogh and Leonard Nimoy devoted their lives to creativity. They were artistic innovators. Vincent (who signed paintings with just his first name) created a new way to paint with expressive brush strokes. His troubled mind was plagued with epilepsy, but he found remarkable beauty in the world and showed it through paint.
Leonard Nimoy (AKA “Spock” from Star Trek) was an actor, film director, photographer, author, singer and songwriter. President Obama referred to him as, “a lifelong lover of the arts and humanities, a supporter of the sciences, generous with his talent and his time.”
A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
Live long and prosper, Mr. Spock. Nimoy was also a huge fan of Vincent. He wrote and starred in a live theater performance where he played Vincent’s brother, Theo van Gogh. Nimoy performed this solo act across the country, and the DVD is now a collectors item.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is another advocate of both art and science. We sent him a few Cosmic Mugs, and he wrote us a couple nice letters in return! That’s pretty amazing, considering a man with over 4 million Twitter followers and his own TV show probably gets a ton of mail. Dr. Tyson said:
“I will definitely use and admire what you’ve sent. I’m gratified to be able to inspire the same enthusiasm for the universe, as I have.”
Tyson is a big fan of Vincent, as seen in this Tweet back in April:
This morning's Moon is about the same phase & sky position captured by Van Gogh in "The Starry Night" pic.twitter.com/BWvbF07mKl
Tyson is also a “Trekkie” (AKA Star Trek fan) as seen in this fan selfie:
I hope it can be seen, at least in an abstract way, that these inspiring people are helping my newest body of artwork explore more ways to positively influence society.
August is Artist Appreciation Month, and I decided to give away some of my newest Cosmic Mugs to all of you, totally free:
Since we’re already talking about Christmas, it’s time to announce that I will have a HUGE batch of Cosmic Mugs available at HUGE price discounts, ready in time for the holiday season- hopefully by November 1st!
As more people sign up for my email list, the Cosmic Mug selling price will drop. This giveaway lets you share with friends and family to increase your chance of winning, while helping to lower the retail value of the mugs I can offer in time for Christmas. Hopefully, you all can get a truly amazing deal on my newest artwork, while helping me build a pottery studio that actually has heat and running water.
Thirty-four years ago, astronomer and Cosmos host Carl Sagan made his famous claim:
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” – Carl Sagan. “The Lives of the Stars.” Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. PBS. 1980.
Sagan could have been talking about making anything from scratch. His goal was to convey that everything on earth, everything in the universe, is made up of precise combinations of the most basic elements, and those elements were created in stars’ nuclear cores. We could also say, “If you wish to make a pot from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
These star-forged elements combine to form all the components of ceramics: the different strains of clay (silicon and iron), the water used in throwing (oxygen and hydrogen), the arboreal ingredients of glazes (calcium), and even the potter himself (carbon). Entire books could be written focusing solely on one of these ceramic elements.
Copper, for example. Copper red glazes have been meticulously pursued and produced since the fifteenth century in China. The new host of Cosmos, Neil deGrasse Tyson, often analyzes the concept of a “Goldilocks planet” – a planet which has the precise conditions for possibly sustaining life. A successful copper red glaze is a “Goldilocks glaze.” Everything in both the recipe and the firing must be perfect.
Caution: No room for error.
As Sagan and Tyson have taught us, science is found in everything we do. Baking an apple pie from scratch, developing a new drug, and mixing and firing glazes all rely on experimentation, creativity, and chemical reactions. A potter doesn’t need a degree in chemistry, but he uses some pretty cool science to produce copper red glazes.
Nowadays, gas-fired kilns produce the best conditions for copper red glazes, but ancient Chinese potters created their beautiful pieces using only wood-fired kilns. Many potters do not have regular access to gas- or wood-fired kilns, and use electric ones instead. Electric kilns eliminate the need for constant temperature monitoring, but they are unable to create the atmosphere copper red glazes require.
Hello in there!
Copper red glazes need to be fired to a temperature called “cone 10.” This photo shows three cones (small pieces of clay), set up inside a gas-fired kiln. Each of these pieces is made from a different factory-produced type of clay formulated to melt at a certain temperature. A device called a pyrometer can be used to measure the temperature of the air inside the kiln, but what really matters is the temperature of the clay, hence the use of cones. When cone 10 melts, the potter knows the clay is roughly 2345 °F.
Even inside the same kiln, the atmosphere unavoidably varies. The pots below all had the same glaze and firing, but were placed in different areas of the kiln.
The green color on the right also occurs when firing a copper glaze in an electric kiln.
Color, just like copper, depends on the stars. Light from our sun strikes objects on earth, and those objects absorb some wavelengths of light and reflect others. The wavelengths they reflect are the colors we see. As Tyson puts it:
“Color is the way our eyes perceive how energetic light waves are.” – Neil Degrasse Tyson. “Hiding in the Light.” Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Fox. 2014.
Thankfully, potters did not have to create the universe to make pots from scratch. Their ingredients are already present in the cosmos, swirling in the air and lurking in the earth, waiting for them.
Chuquicamata Copper Mine in Chile. (Image: Property of Till Niermann, located in the Wikimedia Commons.)
Live long and prosper, Mr. Spock. Nimoy was also a huge fan of Vincent. He wrote and starred in a live theater performance where he played Vincent’s brother, Theo van Gogh. Nimoy performed this solo act across the country, and the DVD is now a collectors item.
