Specsone is an underground favorite! You have seen his bold graffiti on city walls (he keeps it legal) and his paintings on canvas, where he takes his larger than life art form to a gallery scale. Specsone’s work referenceselements of hip hop culture and are also inspired by comic books and graphic novels. Catch his showing at the Georgetown Tileworks (5905 Airport Way S in Seattle).
Specsone is an underground favorite! You have seen his bold graffiti on city walls (he keeps it legal) and his paintings on canvas, where he takes his larger than life art form to a gallery scale. Specsone’s work references elements of hip hop culture and are also inspired by comic books and graphic novels. Catch his showing at the Georgetown Tileworks (5905 Airport Way S in Seattle).
Specsone is an underground favorite! You have seen his bold graffiti on city walls (he keeps it legal) and his paintings on canvas, where he takes his larger than life art form to a gallery scale. Specsone’s work references elements of hip hop culture and are also inspired by comic books and graphic novels. Catch his showing at the Georgetown Tileworks (5905 Airport Way S in Seattle).
1. Who or what is your biggest artistic inspiration?
I have many but i would have to say Jack Kirby
2. What is your favorite local book store?
Half Price Books
3. Where is the best place to view art in Seattle?
Not sure. Either Pioneer Square or Georgetown. But you know how art
is. It could spring up anywhere!
4. What is the best web site or blog that we don’t know about yet?
Well if Disinformation has a webpage. That would be my pick.
5. If you could have anyone paint/spray your portrait who would it be? why?
Kenneth Patchen to see what words he might add to it.
[Editor’s Note: As in the print magazine’s Artist Portfolio, the blog feature will showcase exceptional visual talent in all mediums. Please send submissions to ali @ rivetmagazine.org.]
Mike Leavitt’s recent show at Seattle’s Gallery 63eleven featured renderings of places like the Sunset bowling alley (painted on a bowling pin) and the Blue Moon Tavern in the University District (painted on a pack of smokes). Mike Leavitt creates a variety of incredible work including handmade action figures. It is a minor travesty we can’t show it all to you on our blog. However, we can direct you to a place where you can view the fruits of his artistic labors.
http://www.intuitionkitchenproductions.com/
[Editor’s Note: As in the print magazine’s Artist Portfolio, the blog feature will showcase exceptional visual talent in all mediums. Please send submissions to ali @ rivetmagazine.org.]
Mike Leavitt’s recent show at Seattle’s Gallery 63eleven featured renderings of places like the Sunset bowling alley (painted on a bowling pin) and the Blue Moon Tavern in the University District (painted on a pack of smokes). Mike Leavitt creates a variety of incredible work including handmade action figures. It is a minor travesty we can’t show it all to you on our blog. However, we can direct you to a place where you can view the fruits of his artistic labors.
Mike Leavitt’s recent show at Seattle’s Gallery 63eleven featured renderings of places like the Sunset bowling alley (painted on a bowling pin) and the Blue Moon Tavern in the University District (painted on a pack of smokes). Mike Leavitt creates a variety of incredible work including handmade action figures. It is a minor travesty we can’t show it all to you on our blog. However, we can direct you to a place where you can view the fruits of his artistic labors.
1. Who or What is your biggest artistic inspiration?
Lately it’s been Barack Obama. I’ve been inspired by him personally since 2006, but all the success as of late has got me all high on hope and amped on optimism. The more direct inspirations for my work are pretty obvious and self-explanatory if you take a second to look at it. Since I base most of my work on real-life people, places and objects, it’s basically just these exact subjects that inspire the work. If I B.S. my way through explaining it any more than that, my work will seem like self-obsessed catharsis and it’ll sound like the boring old talk of an over-educated grad school student.
2. What is your favorite local book store?
Elliott Bay. I’m so fucking sick of old squeaky wood floors being torn out in Seattle. The only other one besides Elliott Bay is what used to be a cozy REI, now Value Village. At least they still left the staples ground into the wood bricks. There are some wooden corners of Pike Place that are squeaky, but you gotta deal with all the SUV-sized baby carriages, glacial tourists, and cell-phone-yapping yuppies.
3. Where is the best place to view art in Seattle?
Goodwill, Roq La Rue, Schmancy, Uwajimaya, Golden Age Collectibles, and any other place without huge sterile white walls imprisoning entertaining objects.
4. What is the best site or blog that we don’t know about yet?
Mine - http://www.intuitionkitchenproductions.com/
5. If you could be a made up comic book superhero what would be your name? Why?
It would be Fo’Real, so I could run around and call out all the corny, played-out, artificial, impersonal crap that most people pass as genuine, interesting, or meaningful. I’d have a magical bitch slap that’d make someone instantly quit being a chicken shit and start saying things they’ve always been afraid to say. I’d probably have to have someone like Mr. Diplomat as a sidekick to balance my attack. We’d fly around in a supersonic PR machine, hunting down loud-mouthed pessimistic assholes that keep people quiet, cynical, and complacent.
http://www.intuitionkitchenproductions.com/
[Editor’s Note: As in the print magazine’s Artist Portfolio, the blog feature will showcase exceptional visual talent in all mediums. Please send submissions to ali @ rivetmagazine.org.]
Casey Curran is a Seattle artist who’s ability to fuse thick old books and miles of wire is beyond crafty. Not only does he have the skills to rework wire into an etymologically perfect insect, many of his works feature a hand crank and moving parts on the background of several seamlessly connected, once loved books. Curran’s crafty works can be seen at Gallery IMA in Pioneer Square, and the link, where there is series of his work in glorious vintage (looking) motion.
Casey Curran on YouTube
[Editor’s Note: As in the print magazine’s Artist Portfolio, the blog feature will showcase exceptional visual talent in all mediums. Please send submissions to ali @ rivetmagazine.org.]
Casey Curran is a Seattle artist who’s ability to fuse thick old books and miles of wire is beyond crafty. Not only does he have the skills to rework wire into an etymologically perfect insect, many of his works feature a hand crank and moving parts on the background of several seamlessly connected, once loved books. Curran’s crafty works can be seen at Gallery IMA in Pioneer Square, and the link, where there is series of his work in glorious vintage (looking) motion.
Casey Curran on YouTube
[Editor’s Note: As in the print magazine’s Artist Portfolio, the blog feature will showcase exceptional visual talent in all mediums. Please send submissions to ali @ rivetmagazine.org.]
Casey Curran is a Seattle artist who’s ability to fuse thick old books and miles of wire is beyond crafty. Not only does he have the skills to rework wire into an etymologically perfect insect, many of his works feature a hand crank and moving parts on the background of several seamlessly connected, once loved books. Curran’s crafty works can be seen at Gallery IMA in Pioneer Square, and the link, where there is series of his work in glorious vintage (looking) motion.
1. Who or What is your biggest artistic inspiration?
Well that’s two questions. The answer to the first being Alexander Calder. I think of him as the seed that sowed the forest, and a more resent inspiration would be Arthur Gansen. Both are kinetic artists and I gained much of my mechanical inspiration from each. My biggest inspiration art-wise is antiquated knowledge. I like to rummage through old bookstores turning through time yellowed pages and the cracked spines of hard bound books. It’s interesting to read a book written over a hundred years ago and see how the values imbued there apply to the values of contemporary society.
2. What is your favorite local book store?
I do most of my art gathering at both Twice Told Tales and Half Price Books. Half Price Books has a better dumpster though.
3. Where is the best place to view art in Seattle?
You mean besides Gallery I.M.A. where I show my art right? I’d have to say Greg Kucera has consistently good shows but I really like what the Frye has been doing in the last year or so.
4. Best place to hide in public?
The best place to hide is in the open. More often than not when you’re having a really good hair day.
5. What is the best site or blog that we don’t know about yet?
I don’t read blogs, I just listen to NPR. You’ve heard of NPR right?
6. If you could go to any planet in our solar system which would it be?
I’d like to see what’s in the middle of Jupiter’s giant red spot. Of course I would see this from space in the safety of my rocket ship. I wouldn’t really be able to see it from the ground. In fact there really isn’t any ground to Jupiter, just gas eventually compressing to liquid.
[Editor’s Note: As in the print magazine’s Artist Portfolio, the blog feature will showcase exceptional visual talent in all mediums. Please send submissions to ali @ rivetmagazine.org.]
Friends and UW MFA graduates Fred Muram and Mike Simi created Fire Retard Ants to artistically revist the awkardness of their childhood. Their work about “growing pubic hair, fighting ninjas, eating Cheez Whiz, all while maintaining a C+ average, so their parents will take them to Pizza Hut” is featured this month at SOIL in Pioneer Square.
Title: T.A.R.P.
Medium: 35″x”45″ Archival Inkjet Print
http://fireretardants.wordpress.com/
[Editor’s Note: As in the print magazine’s Artist Portfolio, the blog feature will showcase exceptional visual talent in all mediums. Please send submissions to ali @ rivetmagazine.org.]
