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September Exhibit: 
POP THIS
features Troy Gua and Mike Leavitt
Seattle art favorites Troy Gua and Mike Leavitt bring an eclectic inventory of eye-popping, mind-bending wares to the Northwind Arts Center in Port Townsend September 3rd – 27th.
POP THIS opens September 3rd, with an Opening Reception on Saturday, September 4th during Art Walk, from 5:30 – 8:00pm.
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.
Troy Gua has exhibited extensively in the wider Seattle area, and his work has been shown in New York, Texas, and Oregon.
Scroll down to see more images!
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. A Seattle based artist, Mike Leavitt has also exhibited his work in New York, San Francisco, and other cities.
Gaga Dada by Troy Gua
Brangelina by Mike Leavitt
Northwind Reading Series
On Thursday, September 9, Northwind Reading Series features Cheryl Merrill and Kate Carroll de Gutes. The readings start at 7 p.m. in the Northwind Arts Center.
Cheryl Merrill lives and works in Port Townsend, Washington. Her publications include poems in Paintbrush, Northwest Review, Willow Springs and others; poems anthologized in A Gift of Tongues: 25 Years of Poetry from Copper Canyon Press; a chapbook of poems, Cheat Grass, from Copper Canyon Press in 1975; and publications of a photo-essay series about elephants in Iron Horse Literary Review and in The Drexel Online Journal. Excerpts from her book in progress were published in Fourth Genre, Pilgrimage, Brevity Seems, South Loop Review, Ghoti, Alaska Quarterly Review and Isotope.
Her essay, “Singing Like Yma Sumac,” was selected for the Best of Brevity 2005 included in Creative Nonfiction #27 and was also included in the anthology Short Takes: Model Essays for Composition, 10th Edition. Her essay, “Trunk,” was chosen for Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXXII Best of the Small Presses 2008 Anthology. She is currently working on a book about elephants: Larger than Life: Living in the Shadows of Elephants.
Kate Carroll de Gutes started her career as a journalist, which means that she is a stickler for the truth (capital T) and that her writing is almost always sparked by some event or thing outside herself.
Her writing has been featured in the Seattle Review, New Plains Review, Raven Chronicles, Gertrude, and other journals, as well as in various anthologies, newspapers, and on the Web. She lives and writes in Portland, Oregon with her partner Katrina, who insists that every road is a good road.
On Thursday, September 23, Northwind Reading Series features Sally Albiso and Jerry Kraft. The readings start at 7 p.m. in the Northwind Arts Center.
Sally Albiso is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, winner of the 2007 Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize, and The Comstock Review’s 2007 Muriel Craft Bailey Memorial Award. Her poems have appeared in Blood Orange Review, Cascade, Crab Creek Review, Pontoon: an anthology of Washington State poets #7, 8, and 10, Rattle, and The Comstock Review. Her chapbook, Newsworthy, published in 2009, won the Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award.
Jerry Kraft is a playwright, poet and theatre critic. His plays have been widely produced, most recently as part of the 14/48 Festival in Seattle. His poetry has been published in Rattle, Willow Springs, Driftwood Review, Tidepools, Bellowing Ark, Scythe, Foundling Review and others. He reviews Seattle theatre for www.SeattleActor.com and teaches memoir writing classes through the Clallam Y.
Northwind readings are free, though donations are gladly accepted to support Northwind Arts Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to connecting the arts to our community. For more information contact Bill Mawhinney 437-9081.
Northwind Arts Alliance has workshop space available by reservation for a nominal fee. Tables, chairs, small kitchen, large sink and bathroom facilities are available. Come by the gallery to reserve the space, or contact Jay Haskins or Jeanette Best to schedule.
