A few months ago I got a call from Meg, the owner of Art and Inspiration Gallery in Nashville, TN. She invited me to make some one of a kind tomato art pots for the Tomato Art Festival they have there every year the second weekend in August. It’s a really big event, the largest of its kind in the United States with a parade, an art festival, a tomato beauty contest, a cooking contest, a tomato queen, a tomato haiku contest, and zillions of other weird facets of tomatoalia. So I used this project as a prompt for creativity and last week we had some really good times in the Wallyware design think tank. I wish I had allocated more time for this project, because it turns out there are an unlimited amount of crazy design ideas you can come up with when you get rolling on the subject of tomatoes. You can see all nineteen of the pots I came up with in my Facebook album, “The Nashville Tomato Series”. Here are a few of my favorite pieces that came out of the kiln this morning:
“Tomatonetics” is a riff on the cover of L. Ron Hubbard’s book, “Dianetics.” No, I’m not going to post a link to the Church of Scientology. I’m paranoid enough about posting this picture on my blog.
“Are we not men? We are tomatoes!” pretty much drew itself. I love H.G. Wells and Devo.
I made four of these “tomato pedestals” as a place to put your prized tomato. This one has brainwashed devotees around the base saying, “I sold my house and car for The Great Tomato.” And, “He’s going to make me a movie star!” And finally, “I’m carrying The Great Tomato’s baby!” Remember, I only made one of each of these items….
Ritual sacrifice, anyone? Yup, this one is all about the dark ritual of murdering a tomato.
“Tomatozilla” was the very first thing I drew for this series. Like I said, we really only scratched the surface on the potential for tomato art. So if these items sell well at this year’s show, I’m in for making more next year because it’s just too much fun to create stuff like this. Here’s how I decorated one of the packing boxes we shipped the pots out in today:
P.S. Good news! All nineteen of these pieces sold at the show. I think that means we’ll do some more for them next year. Yay!