The undeniable fellow Seattle native Mr. Troy Gua and I bring our wares to the once military outpost-turned vibrant art community known as Port Townsend, quite possibly located in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. We expect all Seattle-ites to make the short jaunt up the West side for this. For myself, it’s an incredibly rare opportunity to show locally as my hometown seems to have less and less interest or ability to exhibit my work. More info on this show will be posted here as it becomes available.

“Pop This” Troy Gua & Mike Leavitt Show

opening reception 6-9pm September 4, 2010

show runs Sept. 3-27, 2010
Northwind Arts Center: northwindarts.org
2409 Jefferson Street; Port Townsend, WA

PORT TOWNSEND, WA- Seattle art favorites Troy Gua and Mike Leavitt bring their eclectic inventory of eye-popping, mind-bending wares to the Northwind Arts Center in Port Townsend. “Pop This” opens September 3rd, with an Opening Reception on Saturday, September 4th.

Since turning a tumultuous life around, Troy Gua’s ascendance into an art career has amassed a staggering catalogue in a few short years. Gua’s paintings, sculptures, photos and digital work marry the commercial and contemporary, while conveying an ultra-clean, glossy design aesthetic with a keen sense of humor. His subject matter deals with the layering of identities, American cultural critique and commentary, celebrity obsession and the universal human need for recognition. Punctuated by his ingenious “Pop Hybrids”, Gua’s mass appeal taps a global pulse with a Midas touch. He’s a Shamanistic broker in the currency of pop culture, his life and work fluidly galvanizing into a mature, candy-coated package known as the art of Troy Gua.

Mike Leavitt is an artistic anomaly. He’s responsible for a vast range of projects that exploit contemporary icons for a cultural purpose, including his Art Army® action figures, suicidal celebrity bath towels, a “Real Life” board game, infamous wedding cake toppers, and “Hip Hopjects” replete with DIY kits to assemble cardboard shoes. Leavitt is at once a master craftsman, a comedian, and the hardest worker on the job. Tirelessly converting cunning imaginings into skillfully materialized brilliance, Mike Leavitt is Edison, Twain, Michelangelo and Gepetto alloyed into a compact, one-man art-making machine perpetually manufacturing art for the masses.

Gallery 1988 is hosting their latest annual installment of the fantastic “Crazy for Cult” themed group show featured a mind-boggling slew of artists. This time, the ‘cult movie’ theme remains but the format changes to specifically custom vinyl and one-off figurines and toys. It should be pretty amazing. My offering is this newest Harold & Maude cake topper pictured below. The show opens September 4, 2010 (DATE CHANGE!- used to be Sept.3, now it’s the 4th!!!) and runs until September 25, 2010 at Gallery 1988’s San Francisco location. All info on the gallery is at gallery1988.com.

Greg Lundgren’s gallery devoted to “boutique deathcare” is open in Seattle, located 2 doors North of Lundgren’s “5-year performance art installation”, The Hideout, which is an awesome bar and funky art gallery. The action figure below depicts the father of Greg Lundgren and is a sample his ’boutique deathcare’ gallery. My action figures is one of several means with which to memorialize lost loved ones via Lundgren’s enterprise. Instead of the standard urn and tombstone fair, Lundgren’s gallery offers several new means of immortilization. The new ‘deathcare’ gallery brings in other work by several of Seattle’s absolute best artists, to compliment Lundgren’s own monuments, including paintings, urns, and other objects crafted by Charles Krafft, Roy McMakin, and Jesse Edwards. Lundgren himself has made exquisite innovations in the art of tombstones, and the rest of us are only trying to offer something beautiful and meaningful as well.

Lundgren Memorials online

Seattle P-I article on Lundgren’s deathcare boutique online

October 30, 2008
“Obama and The New International Perspective”
organized by the Italian Democratic Party (Partito Democratico)
Theatre Ambra Jovinelli. Rome, Italy
Just in time for the last days before election day the buyer, Mr. Francesco D’Alessandris, of my piece in MoveOn/ObeyGiant’s Obama art contest organized more Obama artworks to show in Rome. Many Obama artworks were be hung including work by other MoveOn/Obey finalists KC Willis and Nick Rock, to benefit the Obama election campaign from abroad. Both Nick Rock and I attended the event in person, but time ran out for our scheduled public discussion. The “Obama and The New International Perspective” event at Theatre Ambra Jovinelli was a very large umbrella event to celebrate the Obama campaign abroad. Over 500 attended.

This was also the public debut of the 12-inch tall, polymer clay Barack Obama Art Army action figure. Along with the figure and “grassroots” piece of mine, I ported several other works for the show, mostly made from two different stencils I made (samples below). The first was very simple and made in 2006 to get Obama off the ground, the second I made more recently to do t-shirts and such. To my utterly ecstatic surprise, the Italians are in love with Obama. Not only is it a testament to the intelligent, informed, and progressive nature of Europeans, it’s just another sign that the fractured world-wide perception of the U.S. have changed literally overnight now that Obama is elected.

Mike Leavitt/Art Army New York City solo debut show, June 23-30, 2007
on display: hand-made action figures in dioramas and blister packages, hand-drawn trading cards and bubble gum packs, miniature landscape painting pennies, canvas landscape paintings, other mixed media sculpture, product-satire pricing labels, site-specific “building” installations, acrylic-painted street windows
contact ShowroomNYC/ToyTokyo

Leavitt’s debut in Palm Springs and at M Modern Gallery. The crux of this show is a series of celebrity wedding cake toppers, a la the custom cake toppers.

Mike Leavitt
“Real Love”
Gay Cake Topper Show
M Modern Gallery
Seattle-based sculptor Mike Leavitt discovered an ingenious side-business in creating custom wedding cake figurines. Hand-carved from photographs provided by the bride and groom, Leavitt would sculpt miniature versions of the couples, making a playful turn on tradition and immortalizing the partners as sculpture. Real Love, at M Modern Gallery, celebrates gay marriage in this collection of famous same-sex partnerships. In the midst of tense political discussion and equal rights struggles for gay couples, Mike Leavitt offers a notorious gay clientele an entertaining breather and fun reminder that art and love triumph biased politics.

Leavitt’s miniature clay figurines depict couples like Ellen DeGeneres & Portia DeRossi, Jack Twist & Ennis Del Mar (Brokeback Mountain), Siegfried & Roy, and Susan Sontag & Annie Liebovitz. Other famous pairs include John & Yoko, Barack & Michelle, and Brad & Angelina. Gay or straight, all of these cake topper couples have endured through the immaterial trials of the public eye. A big celebration of Real Love is packed into Leavitt’s little people paired in wedlock.

WORK FROM THE SHOW IS AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE ONLINE HERE

Stolen Space Gallery www.stolenspace.com
Charles Krafft & Mike Leavitt’s “Pitchfork Pals” bombard London with the best of Seattle’s post-grunge visual art culture. A variety of handcrafted items transform Stolen Space Gallery into a sinister souvenir shop with dictator teapots, life-size human bone china shovels, cardboard shoes and action figures. A sampling of individual projects frames the debut of this dynamic duo’s “Pitchfork Pals” ceramic collaborations.

“Pitchfork Pals” spawn from an ongoing dialogue between two artists separated by 30 years of age who share a mission for art alternatives. Since 2005 the two Seattle natives have formed a series of media icons, politicians and celebrities such as Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Aleister Crowley, Nick Griffin and Amy Winehouse. Leavitt sculpts these busts 20 to 30 cm tall, then each edition is slip-cast and hand-painted by Krafft in his basement. Some become classic busts, teapots or the British “Toby mug” knick-knack. Taking pride in their handiwork, these two iconoclastic craftsmen are not armchair critics. The artists’ politics range widely, so their meditation on manufactured evil is not easily digestible. Looking into the deeply carved pupils of a “Pitchfork Pal” conjures biographical depths underneath easy editorializing. Totemic power and sculptural nuance make these tainted characters undeniably mesmerizing.

Charles Krafft utilizes traditional Delft techniques for clever juxtapositions and dark satire. His oeuvre includes an arsenal of porcelain weaponry, Spone™ (human bone china) reliquaries, Disasterware™ plates, and his “Forgiveness” line of copper swastika-capped perfume. His history of collaborations includes long friendships with Kustom Kulture hero Von Dutch and the internationally respected American master painter Morris Graves. With a career survey published by Last Gasp in 2005 entitled “Villa Delerium”, Krafft has been the beneficiary of grants, residencies and exhibitions in some of world’s more adventurous museums and galleries.

Mike Leavitt is responsible for a variety of projects that exploit contemporary icons for a cultural purpose. His hand-made Art Army® action figures depict an everlasting series of artists, musicians and celebrities. Leavitt’s “Hip Hopjects” are razor sharp replications of nostalgic ephemera in recycled cardboard and wood, replete with do-it-yourself kits to assemble cardboard shoes. He also produces suicidal celebrity bath towels, artist proofs of a “Real Life” board game, and his wedding cake toppers now include famous gay couples. Leavitt is represented by galleries in New York, Los Angeles and London.