The main focus of Mike Leavitt's solo exhibit is a collection of shoes made with cardboard. The Seattle artist has a nostalgic foot locker of shoes accurately replicated in cardboard, from ladies pumps to ’80s sneakers. The show will be installed like a thrift shop with Leavitt’s action figures, trading cards, Barack Obama pieces, wood carvings, and other small collectibles in addition to the cardboard shoes. Leavitt will also show two collaboration pieces with “bag painter” Chris Crites and the notorious counter-culture ceramicist Charles Krafft.
Suite101 conducted an email interview with Mike Leavitt, asking the artist about his motivation for this exhibit and how shoes relate to his life.
Q: Of all things, why shoes?
A: Shoes are this great balance between pure function and profound identity symbol. In this way I find shoes a perfect icon for the economic climate. When everyone's pinching pennies, they're still wearing holes in their toes. I might dabble into satire of other essentials in a bad economy: eye glasses, winter coats, toothpaste, food items... but shoes are so intimately linked to our visual culture. Shoes are a necessity that we still get to have fun buying and wearing.
Q: What was the purpose in using cardboard (instead of polymer clay, for example)?
A: Given that I made mostly trendy, expensive shoe styles, it's ironic to use a cheap disposable material like cardboard. I like the juxtaposition and double-meaning. Cheap, disposable material makes an expensive product, oddly resembling the manufacturing of boutique footwear. But the labor makes the shoes into art, not shoes. These concepts bounce back and forth, but I'd rather it not be a heady discussion bogged down in academic ramblings. The simple image of the cardboard shoe speaks humorously and clearly on consumerism.
Q: Do you own the real-life equivalents of the shoes?
A: I do not and never have. Many of the "important" shoes I chose for this show are actually ones I hated because they seemed like such mindless conformity to a trend- Vans, Chuck Taylors, Crocs, etc. My bluntness is probably a result of bitterness. I've just never had the money to spend on expensive shoes.
Q: How many pairs of shoes do you own? Do you see yourself as a "shoe person"?
A: Another irony about this show is that I am anything BUT a shoe person. My entire shoe consists of the following: 1) a pair of 8 year old Birkenstocks I wear in the summer and around the house as slippers, 2) a 3 year old pair of hiking boots I wear for dirty work and all winter, and 3) a grubby pair of sneakers that rotate about once a year.
The exhibit will take place from March 21 to April 18 at New York's Fuse Gallery.
