Andrew Levitas

and it was terrible and so that work you can look at the and so i took images of fishermen and japanese fishermen which is where this took place this particular issue um and sort of melted melted the negative stock which kodak was making for me

And on to this big sculpture of the methylmercury molecule.

And so you could see it as a 10-year-old and look at it and not feel uncomfortable and just look at it as a beautiful object.

But if you look closer, you see really what it is and start to put the pieces together.

And so making these objects became quite...

and it's just fun also right it's a good delivery system for storytelling yeah so really fun to do these things like you get to be a big kid right like i mean i have a laser cutter that can cut a piece of metal that's this thick like butter i mean it's you know i mean if you guys are in new york you're more welcome to any time come by and play a little bit it's really fun

But so how do you get noticed?

How do you get, I mean, like you're, so you're in LA, you're doing this incredible work on your own.

Like, how do you get the attention of the art world or how do you, how does anybody find it?

I've never chased the attention.

I found that I was making things that were different.

My work ended up finding its legs and giving me the financial support that I needed through private clients.

And a lot of...

a lot of like commission work, right?

Where someone would say, Hey, I saw this in this gallery.

It's not exactly what I'm looking for.

And my stuff could go indoors or outdoors, which was also quite unique because you can't generally, there's not much photography or image-based work that can sit outside.

So I was having quite a few folks that were living in hot weather places, vacation weather places, where they have these big homes and they want something big outside.

But most of the sculptural work that you would see traditionally was like heavy, heavy work.

Metal shapes, really.