WALLYWARE

Three galleries well worth visiting, Doggonit!

Wally always goes on the wildest and coolest adventures, mostly figuratively but this month literally.  The Guilford Art Center in Guilford, CT just received a shipment of seventy fetching Wally pieces for their “Hair of the Dog” pet-themed art show that opens on Friday, May 5th and continues through June 24th.  If you happen to be out in that neck of the woods on Saturday, May 19th you might want to check out their cocktail party fundraiser that will benefit the Connecticut Humane Society.  Special guest for the evening (along with Wally) will be Jill Abramson, Executive Editor of The New York Times and author of The Puppy Diaries. Ms. Abramson will sign copies of her book, which will be available for sale.  Schmoozin’ and boozin’ with animal lovers, what could be more tail-waggin’ fun than that?!!!

If you want to see an excellent selection of Wally’s greatest hits and newest adventures, go to the Show of Hands Gallery in Denver, CO.  I delivered a bunch of excellent pots there a few weeks ago and I’ll be making another delivery next week.  They do a great job displaying my work and it’s always fun to drop by and see the amazing selection of fine craft that they carry.  Get your paws on over there!

The Evergreen Gallery in Evergreen, CO has been carrying my work for almost twenty years now and this month they are featuring my ohata kaki red dinnerware in their “Studio to Table” show that runs from May 1 to July 1.  They also have a phenomenal display of Wallyware and I’ve been doing a good job of getting them all of my latest designs within just a few days of each kiln unloading.  This isn’t too difficult as they are just ten miles from our home/studio!  The weather has been absolutely fantastic up here in the mountains this spring, so if you feel like taking a trip to Evergreen Lake, be sure and check out the latest art in downtown Evergreen.  Just don’t strap Wally on the roof of your car on the way home, OK?  He would much rather ride in the car with you.

Clearance Sale! Mugs, plates and bowls for $10.00!

While I love doing topical humor on pottery, it does have its downside: it gets dated.  And sometimes topical humor gets dated really really fast.  But it’s wonderful to own an old design and wait a long time because after a while that old joke can have a certain quaint charm.  Take a look in the wallyware collectables section of this website and you’ll see some great little artifacts of pop culture (e.g. “Wally makes the mistake of using George W. Bush for his lifeline on ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”).  Last month I pulled a number of designs off the shelves in the stock room and put them at a ridiculously low sale price: just ten dollars.  The response from my fans was good, so I just pulled some more old items and slow sellers out of my local galleries and we’re having round two of the big ten dollar clearance sale.  There’s a $10.00 section in Wally’s Bargain Basement in my online store to make it easy for customers to see all of these sale items in the same place.  If you are shopping there, be sure and order only the amount of items we have in stock as I don’t have inventory control on my retail website.  I have to take the items off the site after the sale is made.

Here’s a rundown of some of my favorite items that are available as of the date of this posting (03/17/12):

“Cats and dogs and pigs and bears are cute but if you make a composite animal of all of them it’s kind of creepy”

“Tell me about your drugs”

“Wally learns that Tiger Woods holds the world record for the youngest person to sell his soul to the devil” - available in mugs, plates and bowls.

“Wally learns that on Etsy, “hand-drawn on ironic tableware” means a sharpie drawing on an old paper plate – available in mugs and a plate.

“I WAS GOING TO BUY A GUN AND KILL YOU ALL BUT I COULDN’T AFFORD ONE SO I BOUGHT THIS MUG INSTEAD”

“I’M ON A DRUG. IT’S CALLED CHARLIE DONALD TRUMP SHEEN.”

Nothing captures the spirit of the holidays like a pile of fudge.

Here’s a plate that just screams “HAPPY HOLIDAYS!”  For some reason, my customers tend to love tasteless jokes, and every time I push the envelope in this department, my sales climb.  This item is, of course, in stock and ready to ship so if you want to own the perfect plate for your holiday fudge, get over to the online store and snap one up!

Wally goes to Oregon, California, Washington, Indiana and Maryland!

Good news!  We just had our biggest shipping week of the year so far and there are five new venues to add to the growing empire of fine craft galleries that carry my work. It’s always great to get new accounts and I’m excited about the big orders we just shipped out to these stores.  Here’s a roundup of Wally’s new digs:

Blue Heron Gallery and Gifts – Located downtown in Ashland, Oregon, Blue Heron features an eclectic mix of styles and media from more than seventy artists including an impressive collection of art glass.  Ashland is the home of the world-renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival, so Wally’s possibilities with Shakespeare jokes are endless:  “A coffee mug! A coffee mug! My kingdom for a coffee mug.” Me thinks thou dost pun too much….

Art for the Soul – This is a pair of stores located in Laguna Beach, CA and Balboa Island, CA.  The Laguna Beach venue has been carrying my work for years, and now the Balboa Island gallery will have a display of over forty pieces on their shelves.  Their selection of fine craft emphasizes bright colors and fun.  Perfect!

Crow Valley Pottery – Established in 1959, this working pottery studio/gallery is in the breathtakingly beautiful locale of Orcas Island in the state of Washington.  This is truly one of the prettiest places on earth and Wally gets to go there.  I’m jealous.

Arts A Poppin – Wally makes his Indiana debut in this unique gift shop that is located in the heart of the Art & Theatre district of Indianapolis.  A.A.P. features a great selection of jewelry and clothing with a nice whimsical vibe.  And just one week from today, their shelves will have over fifty of my pots that are sure to take that whimsical vibe up a notch!

Mutt and Joe – The owners of this establishment describe it as “a cozy neighborhood dog wash and coffee bar dedicated to caring for you and your dog in an enjoyable environment”.  Dogs and coffee? Man!  This place and my pots are a marriage made in heaven! I urge anyone out there in the state of Maryland to drop by and see the coffee bar that cleans your dog.  They now have an impressive display of my mugs, and we even did a custom design for them.  Check it out:

“The Agony and the Economy”

Here’s a timely new Wally adventure!  With the economy and the debt ceiling front and center in the news today, it’s only natural that Wally should be riffing on this theme.  I love the fact that now, when someone asks me what I do for a living, I can say, “I recreate The Sistine Chapel frescoes on pottery.”  This minor masterpiece is available in mugs, plates and bowls at my online store.  But wait!  There’s more!  This week’s firing also yielded a bizarre mug for the Mitt Romney camp.    I just found out about the whole “magic Mormon underwear” phenomenon and I couldn’t help but make a commemorative coffee mug about cosmic undies.  I’m thinking that I could do a mug design for each of the presidential candidates in next year’s primary elections.  Have you seen the pic of Michelle Bachman on the cover of this week’s Newsweek Magazine?  Inspiring!!!

On the other end of the pottery spectrum, I pulled some really lovely red pots out of the kiln this morning.  The glaze surfaces are amazing!  They are just a little darker and “smokier” than usual, and the way the glaze pools in the cracks is truly dazzling.  Here are two unique red serving bowls that are for sale for $55.00 each in the Ohata Kaki Red section of my online store.  The one with the altered rim was a bowl that flopped while I was throwing it on the wheel.  I liked the odd undulations in the clay so I kept it and trimmed it.  Then it sat on the shelf unglazed for years, and the ohata red glaze was the perfect way to finish it.  If you like this ten inch diameter bowl, you should snap it up in my online store, because I won’t be making another one like it!

Four new galleries + a new mug series!

Good news! Our shipping department has been burning through the bubblewrap lately and we’ve shipped out a lot of pots to some great new fine craft galleries.  I’m always impressed with the caliber of stores that carry my work, and these new accounts are some of the best of the best.  To see a complete map of the outlets that currently carry my work, take a look at the “Find a Gallery” page on this website.  Here’s a brief roundup of the newbies:

The C2C Gallery in Grand Haven, MI just opened it’s doors on May 27, 2011. Created by artist/potter Cyndi Casemier it features a clay-centric selection of fine craft as well as periodic live performances by local musicians.  We shipped them over one hundred pieces, including some of the new ohata red pots which are selling quite well.  A second shipment was sent to them just a week after the grand opening.  And they pay their bills on time, too!  I like these guys already.

Poppy in Columbia, MO has been dazzling fine craft buyers for over 27 years and Wally is thrilled to be their newest catch.  They have an impressive selection of sumptuous jewelry as well as many big names in American craft.  Last summer Poppy was named a finalist in the 2010 Retailer Excellence Awards competition held during the NY International Gift Fair for “visual merchandising” and they won the top honor!

Imagine in Santa Barbara, CA is near and dear to my heart because Santa Barbara is birthplace of Wally!  I was so happy to get this account and even more pleased to get a re-order of fifteen “Jesus is coming” bowls less than a month after their first order.  Hallelujah!

Quirks of Art in Williamsburg, VA looks like it could be the perfect venue for my oddball pots.  It originally opened in 1997 under the name of “Kinks, Quirks and Caffeine” and I’ve been bugging them to carry my work ever since I saw that name years ago.  It’s a potential match made in heaven, right?  I really didn’t know much about them except that they have a cool name, they’ve won a whole bunch of amazing awards (Niche, American Style, etc.), and the stuff on their website looks awesome.  They posted some pics of my work on Facebook last week (before I had shipped them their first order!) and apparently people are already walking in the door asking for my work.  It’s on its way…!

OK… so that’s the business news.  Now for the art news.  I had been throwing my standard production pots all week and it was the end of the throwing cycle and I hadn’t come up with any new shapes.  For a long time I’ve had this idea to do a series based solely on rock lyrics, so I decided to do a series that will test the waters for this concept.  I started by putting a selection of David Bowie and Iggy Pop songs on shuffle play while I threw the pots:

Then I threw thirty-three mugs kind of quickly, not thinking too much about the shapes.  the point was to have fun with the process of throwing:

While I was throwing and the music was playing, I jotted down lyrics that might make good take-off points for the design work on the mugs:

The next day, the pots were paddled, stamped, trimmed and handled:

I’ll admit it, this project has the potential to be totally self-indulgent and lame.  But I like the idea of forcing myself to do some new design work that is fast and fun and weird.  My assistant is on vacation for two months now and I’ll be doing all the painting on this next decorating cycle. I’m dreading it because I’m not nearly as good at painting as she is.  So these pots will be a break from the standard production line and an opportunity to try some new things with the graphic design elements.  We’ll see!  Come back in a few weeks to see how it’s going….

BBQ tools, bummed-out birthers and drug-crazed air traffic controllers!

This week’s post has a trio of odds and ends from the world of Wallyalia.  First up: an item that’s going to make all you Wallyheads out there drool with envy because it’s not for sale! This one of a kind Wally BBQ spatula was created by my assistant Kelly Clements for her college metalworking class.  No news yet as to what grade she got on it, but I give it an A+!!!

NEWS FLASH! The president of the United States effectively rendered this joke null and void this morning so I’m putting these pots on sale today.  Thanks a lot Barack Obama! Groan.  Some of us were making good money off of that whole birth certificate thing.  To snap the last of these historical collectors items up for cheap, take a trip to “Wally’s Bargain Basement”.

And last but not least, here’s a brand new design about something big in the news these days.  I really like the graphic on this one and it’s interesting to note that this is the first Wally cartoon that doesn’t have Wally in it.  I guess he’s off at the meth lab cooking up the payroll.  You can purchase these right now at my online store.  They will be ready to ship on Monday, May 2nd.

For a GRRRRREAT night’s sleep!!

I’ve always been a sucker for those Lunesta ads.  Seeing that psychedelic neon green butterfly floating above the rooftops and fluttering in through the open window totally piques my curiosity every time it magically appears on our flat screen TV.  I suffer from insomnia from time to time, but the warning labels on those sleep drugs scare the heck out me so I’m never going to try any of them.  Thank goodness Wally can do the things I can’t do.  This latest adventure is both silly and serious.  I just can’t believe that we live in a society where powerful psychoactive drugs are pedaled like breakfast cereal! Were we all asleep when this legislation got approved?  I guess so.  At any rate, I’m pretty sure this new design is going to be a hit as the artwork and concept are spot-on.  Mugs, plates and bowls with this design will be out of the kiln on Wednesday and I’ll have them for sale in the online store that afternoon.  Sleep tight, and don’t let the bed bugs bite.  Hmmmmm… where can Wally go with that one?

BRAIN-EATING SPACE MONSTERS!!

FINALLY!  A new Wally cartoon!  I’d been beating my head against the wall for a long time, trying to come up with a good Tea Party joke and nothing seemed to hit the mark. This weekend I was brainstorming ideas and setting goals for the week.  I simply had to have a new joke on the pots for this week’s firing.  I’d come up with a pretty good one with Sarah Palin and Ted Nugent winning the 2012 Presidential ticket, but it didn’t seem quite right.  There’s an old saying in the cartoon world, “When you wrestle with a cartoon, the cartoon usually wins.”  So the next thing that happened was a minor miracle.  I woke up at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning with the perfect joke in my head.  The basic idea, composition and words “brain-eating space monsters” were all in the dream.  How cool is that?!!  A good Wally cartoon is like an entire movie in one panel and one sentence.  What I love about this one is the series of multiple ironies: Wally is using his smarts to act stupid to stay alive, the guy about to get eaten works for a government agency that loves outer space, the slogan “Don’t tread on me” is getting a whole new meaning, and even a few more if you think about it.  I think this one is going to be a hit!  If you wish to purchase a mug, plate or bowl with this design, head on over to my online store and place an order.

CONTEST: How many pots are in the kiln?

With all the small items I’ve been making lately (e.g. shot glasses, tiny plates), my kiln has been densely packed to the roof.  Every available inch of space is utilized and it’s fun to roll out the finished product.  I’ve gotten in the habit of posting pics of the finished kiln on Facebook, and yesterday I decided to make it a contest to see if my friends could guess how many pots were in the kiln this week.  The winner gets a shot glass, and the deadline is Monday night at midnight.  The pic above is of great help, but I should warn you that there are pots on the second level that can’t be seen.  Good luck!  You can post your answers on the Facebook thread, or simply email them to me through my contact page.

03/01/11 – Congrats to fellow potter, Kathleen Laurie for coming within 4 pots of the correct answer: 254.  I think I’ll be doing more of these contests in the future, so friend me on Facebook if you want to get in on the fun!