Saturday, April 9, 2011

Site Work

-The new Seeking Kali website is up.  After several weeks of collecting files testing templates, writing, photographing and updating, our artist group finally has a nice clean site to show for our efforts.  I'm part of the artist group Seeking Kali which began in early 2010 over some Facebook conversation.

From our splash page:
Seeking Kali began as a response to the eternal Facebook "What's on your mind?" query.  William typed in the thought, "the manifestations of Kali",  Ria Vanden Eynde responded with her thoughts, Susan Shulman joined the thread and we were off. To Where? We had no idea as we exchanged comments on goddess iconography, indigenous belief systems, concepts of time, western perceptions, travels and sources.
That day, I was staring at a tangka, hanging in my studio that depicts the wheel of time being devoured by Kali.  This was one of my first art purchases. I was in my first year of college, lucky to be there by virtue of a scholarship and yet I went and spent some of the meager funds on art. I don't quite know why to this day my younger self, fresh from rural mid New York state, thought to buy that art.  I had never been exposed to Eastern art of any type; yet somehow was drawn to the piece.  I have always had it hanging where ever I've had a studio as a reminder of the beginning of a journey.

So, that day in the studio as I glanced at it once again I was struck with the fact that I'd never really researched the rich iconography or the origins of the image. One of those insightful moments when you realize how little you really know.

I typed "The manifestations of Kali" onto my facebook page and within minutes I was immersed in a conversation with two artist friends, Ria Vanden Eynde and Susan Shulman, that over time has led us to curating an artist call, collaboration on many works and inclusion in several international exhibitions.

I have learned from this collaboration, especially as our portfolio of images relating to Kali is coming closer to completion, that we are incorporating some of those manifestations to bring our work beyond artistic interpretation of the Kali myth.
As we began to think of ourselves as a collective, we find that submerging our individual egos and combining our many arms of differing skills is very fruitful and enlightening, not only to works we create in concert but to our personal work as well.

So welcome to the Seeking Kali website an archive and record of our collaborative efforts.  Seeking Kali is William Evertson, Susan Shulman and Ria Vanden Eynde.

2 comments:

Ria Vanden Eynde said...

what a great tangka! I have one of those 'wheel of life/time' hanging in our hallway-just a poster-too-it changes places where it's hung and I always 'look' at it :)

William Evertson said...

That was the Kali image I was looking at when we started our Kali thread.