If you’re a fan of the new Joe Rogan Kettlebell, you may be wondering what kind of mind could come up with such a creation, and the answer is Christopher Genovese, 41, of Tucson, AZ. The immensely talented sculptor and filmmaker makes lifelike busts of an array of pop culture figures and, inspired by the podcast king (and Onnit co-founder), couldn’t resist immortalizing Rogan’s face in a characteristic pose. (Don’t worry, Joe’s cool with it.)
Genovese’s original sculpture now adorns an exclusive, limited-edition run of real, usable, 55-pound (25 kg) kettlebells, and $100K of the proceeds from their sale will go to one of Rogan’s favorite charities, Fight For The Forgotten, a non-profit that benefits displaced indigenous people in Africa. But the road to get here was a winding one. Below, Genovese tells the story of how the Joe Rogan Kettlebell came to be and the process of sculpting incredible works of art.
ONNIT: How long have you been sculpting?
GENOVESE: I’ve been sculpting as a time-killer since I was a little kid. I don’t have any formal training in it, but my mom would make Christmas ornaments out of salt dough when I was little, and I was fascinated by them. I’ve always been obsessed with little objects—ornaments, or action figures. I went to school for film, but when I graduated I had no money to make movies. I got my creative outlet through sculpting. I started making pieces for myself in 2005 and selling a few commissioned pieces here and there, and it became a sincere business in 2017.
Around that time I had a few big life changes. I was working in the film and television industry in New York, and then I went back to my hometown in Cape May, New Jersey, and thought about what I was going to do with my life. Sculpting just gave me so much joy, and I wondered what would happen if I spent all my time doing it. So I started sculpting around the clock. I sold a few of my sculptures on Etsy but they weren’t commissioned—they were just things that I wanted for myself. I would just think, “This is a cool idea; I want that,” and then I’d sculpt it.
I was almost telling my autobiography through art. I was doing characters in movies and pop culture that told a story to me, or spoke to a certain change in my life.
How did you decide to sculpt Joe Rogan?
I was listening to a lot of podcasts while I sculpted. In 2017, I listened to The Joe Rogan Experience around the clock, so I sculpted a little object to represent that obsession—just a little bust of Rogan with his headphones on looking shocked, like his mind was being blown. Then I sent it to The Comedy Store [in Los Angeles, where Rogan often performs]. I happened to have a friend who goes there all the time and knew people there, and he said that if I sent the bust to them, he would know whom to get it to and that maybe Rogan would get hold of it. I sent the bust, but I didn’t hear anything back.
Fast forward to 2019. I started to wonder if my friend had clowned me and had just taken the bust for himself, so I made a whiny post on Instagram about how I sent the bust but never heard anything back. The post was really directed at my friend because I thought he’d stolen it, but within a week of my posting, Joe posted a picture of the bust. I don’t know if it was a coincidence, or if someone saw my post and got the bust to him, but he had gotten a hold of it somehow.
When Rogan posted that image, my followers on Instagram doubled—and so did my Etsy sales. That let me know I could turn sculpting into a full-time job. I moved out to Tucson and went all in. My dad lives here and he’s a talented gemstone artist, and I like the desert. It’s like living on a Star Trek planet [laughs].
So how did that original design evolve into the Joe Rogan Kettlebell?
Onnit saw my whiny post about how I never heard back from The Comedy Store, and they commented on it. I then reached out to Onnit directly and said I would love to design kettlebells for you guys, because I liked the Monster bells you sell. I had an idea for a Rogan kettlebell but I didn’t want to give it away—I wanted Onnit to hire me first!
Anyway, we lost touch for a while. Then, in 2022, I was planning on doing a bust of another comedian. I went to a meet-and-greet with him and he was so rude to me that I changed my mind. Instead, I started working on the Rogan kettlebell sculpture immediately. During the pandemic, Rogan was posting a lot about his home workouts, and I saw a lot of photos of him making that workout face when he did his kettlebell training. I saw it so much I decided to sculpt his expression into a kettlebell.
Is it true that the sculpture actually started out as a bust of Bruce Lee?
I had sculpted a bust of Bruce Lee and had it lying around, and he was making a similar face to the one Rogan made in his workouts. I thought I could save some work by adapting it [laughs]. So I turned Bruce Lee into Joe for the kettlebell. Now that I think about it, maybe that’s what Joe was doing all along—making a Bruce Lee face.
What happened after you sculpted it?
I posted it online and [comedian] Bert Kreischer—who was already following me—saw it and shared it with Rogan. Then Joe shared it. In 24 hours, I got more than a thousand requests for that kettlebell. I sent Joe a message, thinking he’d probably never see it, but I told him I’d gotten all these requests and I’d really like to sell it. But I didn’t want to do it without his blessing, because it’s his likeness. If I’m making 10 of something, I don’t think about asking permission, but people wanted me to mass produce this thing, so I wanted to ask Rogan if it was OK. I never expected to hear from him, but he got back to me immediately. He said, “You have my blessing to do it, but I want it to be a real kettlebell,” not just a sculpture.
I started looking around for people who did cast iron, and the quotes they were giving me were just insane. I quickly realized it would take too long and cost too much, so I went back to Joe and asked if Onnit would release it. He said, “Give me a minute.” He asked someone at Onnit, and five minutes later Rogan got back to me saying Onnit would do it, and here’s the number to call to connect with them.
How does the final version of the Rogan kettlebell compare to your original sculpture?
It’s bigger! Onnit said it will weigh 55 pounds [editor’s note: the bell is 7.67 inches wide and 11.8 inches top to bottom]. They upscaled it so it’s lifesize—approximately the size of a real head [laughs].
During the kettlebell’s sale, Onnit is donating $100K to Fight For The Forgotten, a charity that benefits displaced people in Africa. How does it feel to have your art associated with such a huge humanitarian effort?
That couldn’t make me happier. If I had financial independence, I would donate everything I could from my own art’s proceeds to causes that matter to me. The fact that Rogan and Onnit do that really makes me feel good. I’m thrilled that the kettlebell will benefit Fight For The Forgotten, and I hope we sell so many kettlebells that people keep placing orders for more.
What goes into making these sculptures? Shed some light on your process.
I gather as many photo references of the person or the object as I can possibly find. As many angles as I can get. If it’s a person, I need a perfect profile shot to get the shape of their face, and I need them taken with a lens that’s over 50mm, because you get photographic distortion if you have a wide-angle lens, and that will screw up the face.
From there, it’s really just brute force. I attack the clay and keep working it and working it until I think it looks good. Anything you try to represent artistically is really just a combination of abstract shapes. I look at a face and I go, “What’s the shape of this part of the nose? What’s the proportion of the eyes to the ears?” You do a million calculations in your brain. I just have a knack for it. I can’t explain it. I’d be the world’s worst teacher. It’s mostly just obsession and not giving up until I’m satisfied.
The busts all start as a plumbing pipe that’s screwed into the base. Then I just build up clay around it most of the time. They’re cast in either stone—gypsum—or a polyurethane resin and metal powder. That gives the piece a beautiful metallic effect, like cast iron or cast bronze.
I usually shoot a time-lapse film when I’m making the sculptures, but, unfortunately, I didn’t with the one that became the Rogan Kettlebell because I was getting tired of filming them and I figured it would just sink into obscurity. I thought, “I’ll just make this and post it and everybody will have a laugh and move on.” [Laughs]
How many hours do you put into these sculptures, and what do they sell for?
A full-size bust takes anywhere from 75 to more than 200 hours to sculpt. I do everything by hand, and it’s a lot of standing. Making a belt buckle might take 20 hours at most. I have one big room in my house that I turned into my studio. I’m like a vampire—I sleep during the day and sculpt at night.
Mini-busts weigh three to six pounds and cost $300–$800. A full-size bust is twice as big and will cost in the thousands. If you want a one-off sculpture with exclusive rights to it, that’s around 10 grand.
Have you sculpted any other famous people that you’ve actually gotten to interact with?
Apart from Rogan, another thing I’m known for is doing an action figure of [comedian] Tom Segura with a broken arm. He’s notorious for making fun of people who get injured on video, and then he broke his arm playing basketball a couple years ago. So I sculpted an action figure of him with a broken arm. But he actually found out about me before that because I painted a portrait of his mom. He’s always bringing her on his podcast and showing her terrible things; she’s appalled by them and I just thought she had the funniest reactions. I thought it would be a nice gesture to paint his mom and send it to him. He loved it and shared it on his show and followed me on Instagram. But I think that was after Rogan and I did the deal on the kettlebell.
We read on your Instagram that you destroy the originals of everything you sculpt. Don’t you think they might be worth a fortune someday, and isn’t it hard to part with your creations?
Yeah, I do destroy them. At first it was because I just didn’t have the money to keep buying clay. Now it’s become more of like a Buddhist thing. Monks used to make art out of sand and then wipe it away. I like the idea of the impermanence of art and deleting the original, because that’s what’s going to happen over time anyway.
That said, I have the molds, so I can duplicate these sculptures as many times as the mold survives. Also, I do have full-size busts of Jerry Garcia and Jimi Hendrix that I’ve kept, and I may continue to hold on to one of them.
How can people place orders for your work?
You can place orders on Etsy. I’ve been making a documentary feature so I shut the store down for a while, but it will be open when the Rogan Kettlebell comes out. I sell my sculptures mostly as stickers, busts, and belt buckles.
What’s next for you?
I went to film school and wanted to make documentaries, but I had to stop because I had no money. The movie I was working on when I stopped, which I’m picking up again now, is a feature documentary called Gem Show, and it’s about the gem and mineral trade and the crazy characters you meet in that world. My dad is the main character, and it’s mostly a personal story about my relationship with him and how he’s battled alcoholism and drug addiction his whole life. He went sober out of nowhere a few years back and wanted to make this movie. I followed him around the world for several years with a camera to different mines and gem cutters. I was exploring the nature of being an artist and how the sacrifices for trying to achieve excellence affect your life. You can either choose your passion or walk away from it. The elevator pitch for it would be Uncut Gems meets Tiger King, because my dad is a Tiger King-like character. It should come out in the next year or so. Film is still my greatest passion. If I had financial independence, I’d still sculpt but I’d mostly make films.
Sign up now to enter our drawing for a chance to purchase the limited-edition Joe Rogan Kettlebell. Participants will be notified the week of September 16.
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