It’s Tebow Time in Wallyworld!

Posted on November 25, 2011 by admin

If you live in Denver, it’s almost impossible not to follow the local sports teams because the media here has a tendency to beat you over the head constantly with sports news. While I’m generally a curmudgeon about pro sports, I have to admit that the Tim Tebow story is really cool.  I love the fact that this goody-goody Christian kid who everybody said couldn’t win big is winning huge in the human cesspool known as the NFL.  It’s the mirror image version of the Tonya Harding story.  She was the bad-ass trailer trash girl in the rarefied world of figure skating and he’s the genuinely earnest and moral guy in the pantheon of thugs and jerks.  Things didn’t turn out so good for Tonya, and they might not either for Tebow, but right now he’s on a roll and it’s fun to watch.

So to commemorate this blip on the sports radar screen, I came up with a new Wally design for all the Broncomaniacs and Tebow devotees.  Seeing as I don’t want to have a bunch of these on my hands if Tebow starts to tank, I only made an initial two mugs and two plates with this design.  You can find them at The Evergreen Gallery, while supplies last of course.  And I’m doing the last firing of the year next weekend (12/4), so you can order as many mugs, plates and bowls with this design as you like at my online store and we can ship them out on Tuesday, December 6th.  I usually don’t care much about the outcome of football games, but this Sunday when the Broncos play the Chargers, I’ll be hoping for another jaw-dropping Tebow victory in the final minutes because I’d love to see the magic continue.  And I’d like to sell a bunch of pots, too…

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Holiday Ornaments!!!

Posted on November 23, 2011 by admin

And the winner of this year’s holiday ornament contest is….. A TIE FOR FIRST!!!  I couldn’t decide between these two so I just picked them both.  The “Occupy” theme was our top entry category, with ideas ranging from “Occupy Bethlehem” to “Occupy The North Pole”.   The hook that worked for me was Marcia Hall’s suggestion that we put Wally under the tree.  When I thought of a dog and a tree, it just naturally led to my favorite dog whizzing on a Christmas tree.  And Anne Amerson sent in a slew of ideas, with radio evangelist Harold Camping’s over-hyped rapture predictions being the the one that fit nicely on an ornament.  I also really liked her suggestion that we do one with Charlie Sheen singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” (“Four call girls, 3 French whores, 2 illegal drugs…”)  That’s very clever, but really hard to draw on a two inch diameter ornament.  And honorable (huh?) mention goes to Pat Newman for suggesting I put the heads of Saddam Hussein And Osama Bin Laden on a pair of ornaments.  I really should have done that and brazenly sold them to the masses, but for some reason I seem to have a sense of standards and ethics these days.  I am such a wuss.  Many thanks to all of you who sent in your ideas.

These ornaments are available for a mere $12.50 in the “Wally Pins and Ornaments” section of my online store.  They are, of course, in limited supply!

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They say it’s your birthday…..

Posted on November 17, 2011 by admin

Here’s something new!  One of my top-selling mugs is now a plate.  I’ve been drawing this design on mugs for a couple of years, and one of my accounts suggested I put it on a plate.  Wow!  Great idea!  People eat cake off of plates, don’t they?  Go buy it here.

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New red pots!

Posted on October 25, 2011 by admin

Last week’s firing yielded a wonderful set of eight pasta bowls that went straight from the kiln to my family’s dining room.  These bowls are nine inches in diameter and so far we’ve filled them with shrimp fettucini,  penne pasta and bouillabaisse.  I really enjoy using this dinnerware and am pleased with its style and durability.   If you happen to be looking for a new set of dinnerware, I highly recommend it.  We just added the nine inch pasta bowl to the ohata kaki section of my online store, but they are a dinnerware item so you’ll have to allow 3-5 weeks for delivery if you are interested in getting a set.  Also out of the kiln last week: spoon rests!  They are five and a half inches in diameter and in stock and ready to ship.  Price: $15.00.

We have a lot of the ohata kaki red pots in stock right now and a porcelain vessel with this warm glaze could be the perfect item for someone on your holiday gift list this year!

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

Posted on September 30, 2011 by admin

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:

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Of Mice and Marriage

Posted on September 13, 2011 by admin

I had a good time doing the research for this joke.  Spencer Johnson’s, “Who Moved My Cheese?” is a widely popular motivational parable on how to deal with change in the workplace. I find it somewhat disturbing that the the animal Mr. Johnson chose to represent the lower echelon workers is the mouse.  Aren’t mice the animals we trap, use for experiments and get up on a chair and scream at when we see them?  And besides, the mouse metaphor was already taken to Pulitzer Prize winning perfection in Art Spiegelman’s, “Maus”.  But I digress.  The caption to this cartoon is “Wally learns that the senior management team is given the secret companion book for ‘Who Moved My Cheese?”  and is available on mugs, plates and bowls at my online store.  It would make a great gift for your boss, wouldn’t it?

And here’s a wild and wacky new mug that just came out of the kiln yesterday!  The quote comes from a Stan Ridgway rant he used to open his concerts with back in the 90s.  I listen to a lot of science programs on the radio while I work, and it’s pretty darn mind-boggling to think about all the amazing and scary stuff that will be coming down the techno-pike within the next hundred years or so.  Yikes! Again, this mug might be the perfect thing to sip coffee out of at work.  Especially is your workplace is a lab where they mix jellyfish and monkey DNA together!  Click here to buy one.

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Kids, caffeine and Jesus.

Posted on August 24, 2011 by admin

Here’s a joke I came up with ten years ago when “Wally” was a weekly cartoon in the Canyon Courier here in Evergreen, CO.  It’s a bit of a soap-box message, but I really like the way it is drawn and the meaning is clear and to the point.  I received an email this week from the prestigious Bonkers Institute for Nearly Genuine Research asking if they could have a fresh link to this cartoon as my old website used to feature it.  You bet, Dr. Bonkers!  So I think I’ll reissue this classic design next month.  They will be available on mugs, plates and bowls in my online store the second week in September.

For the past month I’ve been sending out weekly emails with goofy specials for my fans.  Some of these items are still available in “Wally’s Bargain Basement” in my online store, and this week I’m giving a FREE CRAZY MUSIC CD to everyone who places an order.  But quite possibly the best special of the month expires this Sunday, 08/28/11.  If you order any custom item, you can get it without paying the $5.00 – $8.00 customizing fee!  Just go to the “Custom Orders” section of this website to get some pointers on how to place an order.  It’s pretty simple and a great way to create something really unique.  We received a wonderful custom order yesterday from a very talented ten year old who lives in North Carolina.  Kaylee sent in this superb drawing of a coffee-crazed pig, to be recreated on a mug:

And last but not least, we rolled out a kiln yesterday with a couple of the “Jesus is coming and he’s bringing the bean dip” chip and dip ensembles.  I’ve made these over the years and since the Jesus bowl has been selling better than ever this year (should we be worried?), I figured it would be good to make this item available to all now.  The rim of the plate underneath measures twelve inches in diameter and the set looks great piled high with tortilla chips and filled with salsa.  What better way to celebrate the end of the world as we know it?  The set sells for $110.00 and is available in my online store.

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“The Agony and the Economy”

Posted on August 8, 2011 by admin

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!

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Etsymania!!!!!

Posted on July 24, 2011 by admin

I’ve had a shop on Etsy for over two years now, and I have mixed feelings about this DIY retail site for craftspeople.  .  While it’s great that there is a place for artists to sell their wares online with ease and low overhead, the craft snob inside of me is appalled at some of the riff raff that inhabit this site.  Etsy has been a good place for new customers to discover my work, but it’s been hard for me to get much visibility there .  I don’t like the way Etsy is so demanding of its artists.  To be an effective seller, you need to join teams, registries, and circles.  To be featured up front on the site, you need to buy ads, make connections and write “how to” blogs for the Etsy machine.  My work is labor intensive enough as it is, so spending more time at these pursuits is low on my list of priorities.  But I do scan the daily Etsy emails and I’ve noticed a growing trend on this site: vintage items.  The word “vintage” is a euphemism for “old things the seller didn’t make”.  That’s right, a significant piece of the Etsy pie is the kind of stuff you find in a thrift stores.  One of the weirdest items I found is part craft, part junk: a set of thrift store bowls with the hairdos of The Rolling Stones painted on them.  I’m not kidding!  Take a look:

Oh yeah…. the kids will fight every morning over who gets to eat their Lucky Charms out of the bowl with Keith Richards’ mop.  I must credit these rock and roll hairdo bowls for inspiring my newest Wally design, “Wally learns that on Etsy, ‘hand-drawn on ironic vintage tableware’ means a sharpie drawing on an old paper plate”.  This plate is only available at my Etsy store.  I was hoping that news of this plate would spread like wildfire through the Etsy community and sales would be brisk, but so far all I’ve gotten is a couple of appreciative emails from fans.  Maybe I should buy an ad on Etsy to promote it.  Sigh.

So here I am trashing a fellow craftsperson’s  rock and roll pots, and in the same breath I’ll crow about my latest artwork: the Iggy Pop/David Bowie mug series!  I only managed to get eight of them decorated in the last firing cycle, but I really like the way they turned out.  The method for these mugs was to take a lyric from one of Iggy’s or David’s songs, and use these words as a take-off point for the design.  It’s terribly fun to paint pots like this just for the heck of it, but they are really time consuming to produce.  I should have more of them made for my next firing on August 7th.   These ones aren’t for sale as of yet, and I’ll probably put them all in my online store next month when the series is completed.  Take a look!

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Four new galleries + a new mug series!

Posted on June 16, 2011 by admin

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….

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