Support for the Kickstarter has been great! Everyone seems to love the cosmic glaze colors, but I completely understand not everyone can afford a Cosmic Mug right now. As a thanks for all of your financial backing, social media sharing and positive thoughts, I decided to add a more affordable reward level:
300 sets of four Cosmic Shot Cups (that’s 1,200 tiny cups- WOAH!) are now available through Kickstarter. It will take me a while to deliver them (it’s tough to make a living by hand-making thousands of low priced pots) but more cosmic pots are getting into the hands of more people globally, and that’s a worthy goal. Because these tiny cups are so much smaller, faster and easier to create than Cosmic Mugs, even more people can now get a great deal on a set of cosmic pottery. I’m also happy to announce that we passed our halfway funding goal in less than a week! I’m so grateful for all of your support.
Each pot is brushed with a line drawing that represents a Rocky Mountain landscape.
Ever since I was young, mountains affected me powerfully. I think of them as gigantic sculptures made by nature. Mountains also represent ambition. The idea of reaching the summit of a mountain motivates me to pursue great goals with my artwork. I shot this photo at over 12,000 ft. from the top of Copper Mountain, Colorado, US.
Thanks so much to everyone who backed Cosmic Mugs so far! We raised over $10,000 in just a few days. WOW! That’s enough to install a studio furnace, insulation in the studio walls and to cover all costs of utilities to keep my clay and glazes from freezing this winter. I’m so grateful for all of your support.
Kickstarter also chose Cosmic Mugs as a Staff Pick! This means our project could be featured to millions of people on Kickstarter’s homepage and social media!
This card was from Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield, who wrote me an incredibly humble, inspiring letter after I sent him a Cosmic Mug. You might recognize him from his YouTube performance of David Bowie’s, “Space Oddity” recorded on board the International Space Station. I want to share his words of wisdom with you, because it’s great advice that all of you can apply to your own lives. Colonel Hadfield said,
“I wish you all my very best as you pursue your most distant of dreams while celebrating the joys and victories of each day.”
As a thanks for subscribing to my email list, I decided to send one Cosmic Mug to one random person each week- totally free. My goal is to give more people the experience of using this new, valuable type of artwork. This week’s winner has an email waiting in your inbox, ready to receive this free mug anywhere in the continental United States!
Sorry I can’t afford to ship free mugs worldwide yet. If you’re dying to get your hands on a Cosmic Mug, I have just a few jewels available in my online store here. Feel free to use this 20% off coupon code as a thanks for subscribing to my mailing list: COSMIC20
Otherwise, be sure to enter into the Triple Cosmic Mug Giveaway running through the end of August- definitely your best odds at winning a free mug!
By November, I’m planning to have a HUGE selection of Cosmic Mugs available at HUGE price discounts, ready in time for Christmas delivery.
Studio Shot
Each “Cosmic Friday” you will get a short email where I give away one free Cosmic Mug, show one cool process shot from my studio and share a quote that I found during my artistic research. Enjoy!
The first “Cosmic Platter” – a huge wall piece with dark, starry night glazing…the first of many!
“In many ways, fame is the industrial disease of creativity. It’s a sludgy byproduct of making things…It’s my job as an artist to be understood, and I would rather fight for the audience to have a good experience.”
Hope everyone is having a great summer! This weekend I’m showing pots in Duluth, MN for Art in Bayfront Park. If you’re in the area, come see my newest Cosmic Mugs! Can’t make it? Be sure to check out Facebook or Instagram as I’ll be posting gorgeous photos of the mugs outdoors all weekend- these mugs actually change color in the sun!
In the coming months, I will have a HUGE selection of Cosmic Mugs available at discounted prices. I also plan to run a few free giveaways…so be sure to stay tuned to your email for updates! Part of this upcoming project involves this new video, which shows the process of how the mugs are made on the pottery wheel. Enjoy!
Artists all over the world struggle to find ways to avoid attaching the word “starving” to their job title. For ceramic artists, this often means going to graduate school, becoming a professor, and building networks in academia. Recent industry polls (from the NCECA blog) show how 50% of ceramic artists are academics. Non-academics support their art by selling their wares, working part-time, and pairing with community art centers or galleries. These are all great options.
But are there ways to support art making that we haven’t yet discovered?
Our plan is to utilize the internet to face the “starving artist” fear by forging new paths that would not have been possible until recently. By trying to explore every possible connection through the internet, and then focusing on the few that succeed, we discover new ways to get pottery into people’s hands.
In case you haven’t seen the Facebook posts, Joel is giving away one Cosmic Mug each month to help spark interest in his new work. You’re reading this, which means you’re probably on the mailing list and automatically entered in the monthly random Cosmic Mug giveaway! If you’re the lucky winner, you’ll receive an e-mail asking for your address so we can ship you a free Cosmic Mug at absolutely no cost to you. And the first winner is…drumroll, please…
Subscriber #255: r********@yahoo.com YAHOOOO! CONGRATS! Thanks to everyone else who signed up! Keep your hopes up for your chance to win the next monthly Cosmic Mug giveaway, posted at the end of May.
Social media sites and blogs let us creatively market pottery at extremely low costs. More popular blogs expose Cosmic Mugs to people who might never have seen them otherwise, like the Laughing Squid feature that got 1,000+ social media interactions.
We think it would be awesome to get Cosmic Mugs featured by mainstream media, where millions of people would see what beautiful handmade ceramics look like. Talk show hosts and their guests so often drink from boring, mass-produced coffee mugs. Wouldn’t a Cosmic Mug look cooler?
From left to right: Bill Nye (THE SCIENCE GUY), Boring Mug, and Chuck Nice
The internet allows us to build a network among celebrities. A few months ago, we started communicating through Facebook to people at StarTalk Radio. Their host, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, has six Cosmic Mugs in his office right now! The radio show has since evolved into a TV show, airing every Monday on National Geographic Channel.
StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson airs on Mondays at 11/10C on National Geographic Channel
#1 New York Times Best-selling author and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss podcasts through the Tim Ferriss Podcast, and he also launched a killer, new TV show this week: The Tim Ferriss Experiment. Oh yeah, Tim also owns a Cosmic Mug!
This week I am writing a letter to Bill Nye the Science Guy and sending it along with a Cosmic Mug and an issue of American Craft to the Planetary Society in California. We joined the Planetary Society, and we hope they will like the way Cosmic Mugs bring distant wonders into our hands, allowing people to experience the feeling of space.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with becoming a teacher or professor to support yourself as an artist – many of Joel’s greatest inspirations are teachers (shout out to Ben Carter – innovative educator and podcaster who you pottery people will love.) But we’re devoted to exploring new ways to find success in the ceramics field by teaching indirectly. Connections that started online have already brought Joel’s pottery into the hands of over half a dozen celebrities and astronauts: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Tim Ferriss, Bryan Callen, Joe Rogan, Brendan Schaub, Buzz Aldrin, & Mike Massimino. Monday a Cosmic Mug not only goes in the mail to Bill Nye, but also to Matt Mullenweg. He created WordPress, which not only runs my website, but 23% of the entire internet!
Our global vision is to reach a tipping point that causes pottery to enter the mainstream eye. Stayed tuned…
