A circumcised penis with breasts and wings perches on a pencil above the words “2017 the year you decided to become a political artist.” Made to resemble an eagle, with skin the color of raw chicken, this strange, amusing creation figures in the square-foot drawing titled Reporting Live From the Trenches, by the artist David Leggett. The piece sums up Leggett’s output and attitude: keenly aware of the world and quick with a punch line. And his work is finally finding a wider audience—people hungry for a smart, fresh take on our trying times.
Leggett is from Springfield, Massachusetts, and attended Sacred Heart, a private Catholic school, but says he “lived in a really bad neighborhood.” That socioeconomic disparity left a deep impression. As a kid, the sunny side of life, such as Disney movies and Sesame Street, felt “kind of forced,” he says. “I had that contrast of this wholesome world that doesn’t exist anywhere where I live.”
This past January, Leggett quit a part-time gig teaching classes for the Art Institute online and began working as an artist full-time. His success has helped his parents, whom he describes as very religious, understand his decision to be an artist. “The fact that I went off to college, I got a master’s degree, that alone is impressive to them,” he says. Leggett still seems impressed by this, calling the work “a luxury.” “I almost want to click my heels together,” he says. “It’s very exciting. I don’t think it will ever not be exciting to do this stuff.”
“If you’re going to make something that’s politically charged or has maybe a deeper message—having color, having humor, also craft materials, having these things is like sugar helping the medicine go down,” he says. “It makes people come closer. And sometimes people are laughing at something they probably shouldn’t have laughed at because it’s almost like camouflage.”
