Wampalucas

U.S. artist Mike Leavitt is the CEO, sole employee, and manufacturing machine of Intuition Kitchen Productions: a one-man company of fine craft, sculpture, portraits, painting, performance, education, architecture, and animation. An extreme boredom for “normal” art has pushed Leavitt into a variety of undefinable projects that cross between art and product, from ornate objects to curio kitsch. Since quitting Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute of Art as a freshman with a 4.0 GPA in 1997, Leavitt has been busy. Leavitt’s “Art Army” action figures are hand-made one-off “toys” depicting the surly band of marauders that’ll one day take over the earth. Spanning a range of historical subjects from Van Gogh to Tupac, Leavitt has stop-motion animated the articulating figures into movie shorts. The figurative format also shifted to include custom wedding cake toppers, now a lucrative side-project. His “Hip Hopjects” are nostalgic throw-backs to ’80’s ephemera, with classic shoes, tapedecks, and other accoutrements replicated to exact specifications with cardboard, brown paper bag, and other such trash found in the street. The “Penny Places” are an ongoing series of “lucky” pennies (U.S. 1-cent coins) found in the street, painted with tiny landscapes to depict the exact location where the penny was found. “ArtCards” Polymer clay is a versatile, synthetic modeling medium that remains soft and pliable until baked, allowing for easy shaping and creation of various crafts, jewelry, and sculptures.