Seeking Kali
  • Home/Contact
  • CV/Bio
  • Seeking Kali News
  • Kali Editions
  • Art Mysteries Blog
    • Graphic Novels
  • Video
  • Laments and Hope
  • Medusa Gaze
  • Support Seeking Kali

Bad Bad Bunny, Part II

2/20/2014

 
Picture
Co-author and co-artist of Kalicorp Art Mysteries, Susan Shulman, talks about the development of her Blues Bunny character.  First appearance was Issue #8.


I have had a long friendship with the blues. They are the sparks of magic that ignite my artistic flame. The blues is an intoxicating, seamless backdrop of familiar notes, and rhythms that make me feel I am home and springboards my imagination to unravel on canvas.” 

I started developing the “Blues Bunny character in July” when my mom ended up in the hospital. I originally started these drawings as a way to deal with the daily grind of sitting in the hospital with my 97 year old mom who had suffered heart failure and developed pneumonia. I brought pencils, conté and a sketchpad and drew a different figure daily. Was the only way I could deal with the long hours of worry in the hospital.
Picture
I was trying to find some humour in this dire situation. I thought of the wonderful collection of Beatrix Potter books I have shared with my daughter and as a joke imagined a Blues Bunny version. My mother was in the hospital for nearly a month, so I amassed quite a few. I would show her the musical bunnies and make her laugh as well as amuse and shock the birage of attending medical staff that frequent her room daily. 





I loved the process of drawing these figures so I continued to develop them. I was liberated, sketching for the shear pleasure of the process. I was paying homage to music, blues, musicians, groupies and the interaction that develops between them. I wanted to create a sexy bunny with attitude.
Picture
Usually it’s all about the musician, the music and the desire to be the musician and idolizing that person or group. The spectator/audience wants to morph with the performer and be one with the band. Grab a part of that glamour and glory. But the more I thought about it, I realize it was about inspiration and creativity and the Muse. So Blues Bunny is I as the muse to others and visa versa. It’s that woman inspiring that musician or artist and creating that tension to perform more. And, it’s my muse from that music and performer mirroring back to me, inspiring my art and attitude. I continued to expand this theme to various forms of my art: paintings, drawing and printmaking.
Picture
Which brings me back to the comic. When we left the last issue, we had decided to put more traditional art into our comic spreads. Give it a more hands on feel as opposed to manipulation of our photography and imagery through Photoshop.






We brought in our alter egos, Blues Bunny for me and Samurai for Bill. In William’s woodcuts, he is depicted as the Samurai fighter and this seemed to contrast well with Blues Bunny.
Picture
Link to Susan Shulman's website and more Blues Bunny.















Next blog post - William Evertson on the influence of woodblock prints on his samurai character development.
Picture

Bad Bad Bunny

2/19/2014

 
Picture
Blues Bunny ©Susan Shulman
Picture
Kalicorp Art Mysteries #9
In Issue #9 we continue to evolve our style to include more hand-drawn panels in addition to the usual digital photo-collage featured in past issues. Long time fans will also discover that we have morphed into more cartoon-like characters as we continue our quest to find our fame and fortune in the mysterious ArtWorld.
 
Readers that have been with us from the beginning know that the comic started as our way of promoting our exhibitions in the ads we created for the inside covers. Over time we began to explore the comic format itself as a slow moving blog that featured the background buzz of the current art world as a background story.

As the Epson 3800 cranks out the pages I'll try to re-cap some of the art issues that we joke about. The first section includes a panel on page 3 where we use the face of Georg Baselitz proclaiming, ..."There ain't no great women artists!" Apparently with a new exhibit of decidedly ho-hum works opening at the London Gagosian Gallery, George felt the need to defend his misogynistic remarks from last years interview in Der Spiegel.  We'd link to it but no need to give this overrated troll a boost.  
We made a panel in issue #6 a year ago when Georg's views on woman artists first came to light. From our viewpoint when there are so many great artists that are women it makes little sense that many museum collections are vastly a men's club.

Blues Bunny shows some attitude in this issue as she cleans up those misconceptions. 
Picture
From the bar fight on we blend a potpourri of only marginally related idea; possibly brought on by ingesting the pituri, an hallucinogen native to Australia. Oz as we tend to think of it, since we felt compelled to create our own poppy field dream. Bunny's "orgasmic" idea concerning re-inventing Relational Aesthetics stems from a recent experience I had as a juror reading proposals for grants distributed from Apex Arts. Out of the 50 proposals I waded through 49 of them were some type of work creating a social situation that the artist would curate. Almost all as densely worded as Bunny's panel on page 8.
Don't worry if you can't read Bunny's monologue here; it is legible in the actual comic although it's as much bollocks as most of the proposals I read.

For our non-artist readers, Nicolas Bourriaud coined the term “relational aesthetics” in his 1998 book of the same name. Brief definition - "A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space."
Picture
Bunny becomes convinced that the next great aesthetic leap forward should be creating an addiction to her art.  For good measure the means by which this accomplished involves some cross pollination via spin art. Plus, that gave us another opportunity to poke at big dog Damien Hirst; whose spin art isn't half as good as Walter Robinson's or Corrine Bayraktaroglu who were doing it years before Damien became ArtWorld gold.
Since it seems that Jerry Saltz, art critic for New York magazine is everywhere, it should surprise no one that he also appears in Art Mysteries.

Spoiler Alert - Obviously this all ends badly for the ArtWorld outcasts, but not before we make final mention of Matthew Barney's new six hour film, River of Fundament. Invoking Norman Mailer, sex, violence and a whole lot of excrement, the desire of bad boy artists to shock us with their genius causes us to stifle a yawn. 

I'm glad Bunny and I got this all off our chests and now we can return to our regular art making activities; at least until ArtWorld news makes our heads explode....again!
Picture
In Bad Bad Bunny Part 2 - Susan Shulman on the development of the Blues Bunny character.

    Author - William

    Chronicling the development of the Kalicorp Art Mysteries series of graphic novels. 
    Part art world critique, part art history and 100% satire. A collaged mashup featuring contemporary artists in cameo roles set in the very real world of contemporary art.

    Archives

    February 2014
    November 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    July 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed