Beginning

_ Seeking Kali began as a response the eternal Facebook "What's on your mind?" query. I typed in my thought and soon Ria Vanden Eynde, with whom I've done several collaborations, responded with her thoughts. Susan Shulman immediately joined the thread and we were off. To Where? We had no idea as we tossed around comments on Time, goddess iconography, indigenous belief systems, western perceptions, travels and sources.
Busy with other projects our dance with Kali would take several months before the first manifestation appeared; a beautiful and poignant portrait piece by Ria.

© Ria Vanden Eynde _ Kali Ma

Shortly after this Susan shared her first image and I followed with my mine.  Looking back from where we started, which was the end of January, 2010, it had taken until June to get to that first piece.  Over this period we kept our conversation going on Facebook; using it as a virtual conference room to continue our thoughts.

© Susan Shulman _ Queen Sara Gypsy Kali #1

© William Evertson _ Wheel of Time

These conversations took on a practical tone at times as we made decisions as to how we would present our pieces. Our thought was to make an artist book of our images. Despite our commitment to begin the Seeking Kali blog to share our journey as well as showcase other talented artists, the production of an artist book remains a goal for the three of us.






The format we've settled on is loose folios within a portfolio case. Each of us will be printing on a sheet sixteen inches wide by ten tall. This sheet is then folded to make an 8 x 10 folio.  This format give each of us options on how to use the paper. Longer horizontal pieces can be accommodated or the additional pages created by the fold could be utilized for illuminated manuscript style writing. 




The image below is Susan's use of the folio format (bear in mind that the sheet is folded in half) Mine is the folio's backside; my main image is on the reverse side of this. Also pictured is one of Ria's folios that is designed  to showcase an invocation. (You can see the words in the poem tab of the blog)

Susan Shulman _ folio view

William Evertson _ folio (verso) view

Ria Vanden Eynde _folio view

Our intention is to produce four to five folios each, with versions available in both a hardcase and soft.
Now that we've launched the Seeking Kali blog and artist call in the midst of our own work, even more possibilities seem to be opening up. We hope that the work we're doing with our personal portfolio can act as a blueprint for us to produce collaborations with other artists contributing to Seeking Kali.

Stay tuned; we hope to have this first collaborative work finished in early 2011. 
William Evertson (for Seeking Kali)