Last week’s firing yielded a trio of mugs that were made for the sheer fun if it. I have no idea if these pots will sell, but I really like them. A few weeks ago I was drawing in my sketchbook and I started coming up with some really funny images that needed a “hook” to turn them into full-fledged designs. The aha moment came when I decided to make them a series of pro wrestling style match ups. The first one to evolve is the one most most grounded in reality: “spacey kindergarten teacher vs. grumpy republican”. It is important to note that the grumpy republican character was inspired by a snarky anti-Democrat email cartoon sent to me by a conservative friend who lives a charmed life. Picture a guy who retired from the defense industry at age 55, lives in a dream house in Maui and he gets his kicks sending dumb political emails to his hard-working, humble income, never-to-retire buddy. Grrrrr! But it guess I shouldn’t get too grumpy myself because that dumb email inspired a good cartoon.
“Meth addict vs. giant sand worm” is a lovely match up between a pair of scary monsters. The red lines in the black background are a new scraffito technique that I developed while creating the Bowie-Pop mug series. I’ve always said that if I had never made pottery for a living and I saw something like this in a craft gallery, I would buy it in an instant. I think mugs like this are magical objects!
And further along in the spectrum of weird, we have “Nikola Tesla vs. lobster girl”. This mug was inspired by the book, “Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla”. I just finished it this week. What a fascinating eccentric genius! He developed so many of the scientific marvels of our modern age but he failed to adequately capitalize financially on them. I’m a little annoyed by the fact that the electric car company Tesla Motors ripped off his namesake for their company title. But I suppose it would be somewhat ironic if this company were to go belly-up in the future, wouldn’t it? So if you want to help me capitalize on the genius of these three new designs and help to ensure that my company won’t go belly-up in the future, you can purchase these items and more at my online store.
