Blue Pottery Giveaway: Cobalt Blue in Contemporary and Historical Art

Newer and Bluer Pottery: $600 Giveaway

The future of Cherrico Pottery is looking beautifully blue. Joel has been refining his craft and it’s visible in the newest Cosmic Mugs. Meticulous attention to detail by adding a fifth layer of glaze has resulted in amazingly colorful surfaces in his latest batch of pots. These new mugs are all about brilliant blues.

These aren’t the only Cherrico Pottery mugs to show the wonder of deep blue. Cobalt is a common glaze element to decorate bare pots. Cobalt blue gives special surfaces to many of our pots, including the Nuka Cobalt, Blue Moon Mugs and Mountain Mugs.

What’s So Great About Blue?

What do you think of when you see a Cosmic Mug? The goal is to resemble nebulae as shown in the left image. Hubblesite.org tells how it was created by ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from several young stars. Sounds like a rather complex and distant topic. Can we not also see the references to everyday life in these abstract blue drips, like rain collecting on a window, as shown in the right image?

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson helps us realize commonalities between outer space and everyday life: “Every one of our body’s atoms is traceable to the big bang and to the thermonuclear furnace within high-mass stars. We are not simply in the universe, we are part of it.

Blue hues in Cosmic Mugs come from Cobalt. It is a rare earth element that is mined all over the world. Five pounds of raw cobalt powder would form just a small pile in your hands, yet it costs hundreds of dollars. It’s the rarest element Joel uses. He combines low percentages of cobalt with other ceramic glaze chemicals like feldspar and silica. After firing to 2400 degrees F. the glaze drips cool and result in deep blue hues.

Don’t worry if you’re a bit confused- so are we. We don’t entirely understand what’s causing these colors, but they are stunning.

Joel’s cobalt blue pottery is also inspired by notable achievements in art history. These artists championed the color blue in their own unique ways:

  • Yves Klein invented a new hue of blue and used it in large bodies of work that captivated audiences with their brilliance and simplicity.
  • Picasso created essentially monochromatic bodies of work in various shades of blue during what is called his ‘Blue Period’.
  • Van Gogh used nearly ten thousand blue brush strokes per painting without blending in his skies, communicating movement and emotion in unique, new ways.

We want you to feel our love of cobalt blue through our special blue pottery giveaway.

The Big Blue Mug Giveaway

Enter our giveaway for the your chance to win some of our best blue pottery: a brand new deep blue Cosmic Mug, Lunar Cobalt, Nuka Cobalt or Mountain Mug might be in your future. Five winners will be chosen randomly for $600 total worth of pottery. The giveaway ends on November 8th at 5pm. Enter now so you get more time to post the contest to your Facebook and Twitter to gain extra entries.

Random Cosmic Mugs

Our giveaway isn’t the only good deal for you. The Cosmic Mugs in our Random Sale were also brought back from the farthest ends of the galaxies just for you. Stock is going down, so get yours now while they’re still available.

“Blue is the color of longing for the distances you never arrive in, for the blue world.”

– Rebecca Solnit, Author, from the creative nonfiction piece The Blue of Distance

Photo credit: Charles Kremenak

Photography by: Nicole Pederson

Vincent, Spock and Tyson: Cosmic Inspiration, Mug Giveaway and a Special Announcement

Enter the Cosmic Mug Giveaway

Expanded Consciousness feature_image_template, Vincent and Nimoy

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.

640px-Starry_Night_Over_the_Rhone

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.”

Leonard Nimoy in Vincent, Joel Cherrico Pottery Blog, my DVDLive 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:

Tyson is also a “Trekkie” (AKA Star Trek fan) as seen in this fan selfie:

neil-degrasse-tyson-and-leonard-nimoy-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.

Starry night and cosmic mug in front of Galaxy Collision

August is Artist Appreciation Month, and I decided to give away some of my newest Cosmic Mugs to all of you, totally free:

Enter the Cosmic Mug Giveaway

A Special announcement…

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.

Cheers! LLAP!

Enter the Cosmic Mug Giveaway

Image 14, cosmic mugs in front of magellanic cloud and planetary nebulaFan-Image-and-Cosmic-Mug-planetary-Nebula-and-Molecular-cloud-cluster-hand-collage-home-page-Image-2

Here’s the sauce (AKA the sources):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leonard_Nimoy,_2011,_ST_Con-2.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_van_Gogh_-_National_Gallery_of_Art.JPG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Starry_Night_Over_the_Rhone.jpg
http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2015/02/27/obama-statement-on-leonard-nimoy-spock/24136695/
http://persephonemagazine.com/2012/05/science-news-roundup-5112/neil-degrasse-tyson-and-leonard-nimoy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night
Copyright for Hubble Space Telescope Images of the NGC 2074 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Planetary Nebula NGC 5189, and the Galactic Spectacle STScI-2010-25: Space Telescope Science Institute, www.hubblesite.org