Hi I'm Mikey Artelle, welcome to my Art and Puppetry Blog!
Contact: mikey@pythorcomics.ca
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mike.artelle.1
A group photo of the gang and I from July 2024.
An assortment of my superheroes and puppet characters!
Here I am in 2008 walking with Gordon the Sea Monster in the Puppets Up Parade!
Some of my hand puppets created between 2000 and 2006.
A brief overview of my creative work:
Hello, I'm Mikey Artelle, an artist and puppeteer who lives in Ottawa, Ontario Canada. Since 1987 I've created my own puppet characters and performed them in puppet shows throughout the Ottawa area and at various puppetry festivals. My puppets and performances have also occasionally appeared in television and musical theatre.
In 2003 I wrote, directed and produced the documentary John Conway and Uncle Chichimus which premiered at The Puppeteers of America Festival in 2004. In 2008 I received a "Commendation for Design in Puppetry Theatre" from the Arlyn Award Society for the production of Heroes Past and Present which features my unique superhero puppets. From 2007 to 2009 I was involved as Assistant Researcher and Puppetry Consultant during the creation of the online exhibit Art of Puppetry for the Canadian Museum of History.
In 2014 I began Pythor Comics to self-publish my own comic books. The first full colour book is titled Canadian Crusader: Heroes Past and Present and is based on the Heroes past and Present puppet show. In 2018 and 2019 I presented a men's monthly art workshop program for MAX Ottawa as a mental health initiative within the gay community.
A funny photo from the summer of 2019!
A little bit about myself:
First of all, I'm very proud to be openly gay. I didn't come completely out until 2016 when I was 42, so it took me a long time to get here but better late than never!
In regards to some of my hobbies, I've been a life-long collector of vintage toys and I maintain several blogs about my collections including Mikey's Dolls, Mikey's Action Figures, and Mikey's Muppet Memorabilia Museum. I'm a total geek for anything to do with Jim Henson and the Muppets!!! Additionally, I'm very much into superheroes and comics, and I also love the 1981 Clash of the Titans movie with Ray Harryhausen's creatures.
As for music, my favourite band is Guns N' Roses and I love classic and hard rock music, but I also love KC and the Sunshine Band too! To relax I enjoy going cycling to the beach as often as I can during the summer. I've also taken some classes to learn boxing for cardio as well as how to play tennis which I enjoyed a lot, though I'm not very good at either one! LOL
I know that many people will think this is odd but I'm also a semi-naturist which means that sometimes I prefer not to wear clothing if possible. (A true naturist never wears clothes unless they have to, I'm not that specific about it). I especially love clothing optional camping and swimming as there's nothing more freeing and liberating than being naked outside on a warm, sunny summer day. I tried naked camping for the first time in 2018 and found it to be an extremely positive life changing experience.
People generally don't understand the concept of non-sexual nudity because in our society the only time we see public nudity is when it's being portrayed in a sexual way by the media. We tend to only think of naked bodies as sex objects and get offended by nakedness. It's unfortunate that as a society we've lost the ability to see the virtue and humanity of our natural bodies.
It's so much healthier for the soul to shed our clothes and be free from society's shame, as well as to be seen for real instead of always hiding our true self. I don't like feeling as though a part of my body is so shameful or bad that it needs to be kept hidden away. I find it very sad that we treat each other that way.
I'm actually quite a shy person socially so I never thought that I would have the guts to do such a thing as being openly naked while camping but I'm very glad that I did, and I highly recommend giving it a try if you've never done so. There's nothing indecent about the human body, it's our behaviour that can be indecent... whether we're wearing clothes or not. I wish that the law would just govern our behaviour and not our bodies. I think it's sad that we've made our own bodies illegal to be seen for real in front of one another.
So I like to be openly naked as often as I can be whenever it's appropriate, and I advocate naturism and being openly naked through my profile on Quora. I wish that I could post the unedited version of the above naked selfie here on this page, but I respect that everyone has their own comfort zone when it comes to nudity and might be offend if I did so. Those of you who want to see the whole picture can find it and others at my Quora page..
As for this blog, I'm always adding new things and updating it constantly with new artwork or puppet pictures, so I hope you enjoy browsing through it. Thank you for visiting my blog!
-Mikey :)
My first book "Canadian Crusader: Heroes Past and Present", published in 2019 by Pythor Comics!
Text and photos copyright Mikey Artelle, 2024.
