We recently connected with Shari Weschler and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Shari thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
After many challenging life changes from 2019 into 2022 I arrived on the first day of 2023 sick with covid and felt that I had transformed into an entirely different person.
In 2022 I took on the position as an executive assistant to a corporate CEO, closed a successful contemporary gallery business that survived a pandemic, and moved to a new city. I was separated from a beautiful studio that I had designed and built above the garage of my twenty-year home and was not sure how, or if, I would find a way back to my personal creativity. With the contents of my expression locked away in a storage unit, I leaned on my iphone during the summer of 2022 and shot and shared a body self-portraiture on social media. I incorporated the veil that I had held onto from a thirty-year marriage that I ended in 2019 as a symbol and metaphor for multiple aspects of womanhood and life’s complexities and mysteries.
On that first day of 2023, my son handed me a small Moleskine notebook and a pack of black pens and I began the journey of Project 365; a drawing a day for one whole year. Most often featuring the rabbit, each illustration tells a unique story, speaking to the nature of our inner child, the shadows we carry into adulthood, love, losses, gains, humor, dreams, and the subconscious that threads our lives as both individuals, and as one. Branded and known in various circles as Sumo Bunni, it seemed only fitting that 2023 was the Year of the Rabbit.
A week into the new year, I received a serendipitous invitation from one of my former gallery artists and peers to share studio space at a large mill complex. She set a date for my arrival and gently nudged me to gather my easel, paints, brushes, and canvases. I was warmly welcomed into her community on Valentines Day. Another former artist, peer and dear friend opened a gallery with her partner and they requested my assistance in curating their inaugural exhibition and offered me a show and hosted an artist talk where I shared my journals publicly. The doors are continuing to open….
It is my goal to publish the completed journal project into one comprehensive book.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am branded and well known as Sumo Bunni, an American figural narrative painter. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art, with concentration in painting and art history. While attending MICA I also studied drawing, printmaking, and gelatin silver photography. I have exhibited nationally and internationally in over thirty solo and forty group shows and published extensively.
In 2013, I emerged from full immersion of motherhood as an administrator for a real estate brokerage, becoming a licensed agent and managing their independent gallery, while also teaching art to children through my company Artrageous Adventures.
I later went on to open Coastal Contemporary Gallery, founded May of 2018 in Newport, Rhode Island. The gallery represented over thirty exceptional national and regional artists and collaborated with independent curators and local ventures. My business won Best of Rhode Island, RI Monthly 2021 for Contemporary Gallery. I have served in various positions including board member, curator, co-curator, juror, consultant and portfolio reviewer for other prestigious galleries, associations, and collaboratives.
During the pandemic I reconnected with my own artistic practice and built up a body of new paintings and self-portraiture photography, while operating all aspects of a public business. I wanted to keep the light on for the community and for my artists and hold the line of the faith. In 2020, I united with an artist on the west coast and together we collaborated on a series of original and digitally manipulated images based upon my portraiture. We showed together in ‘Taking Flight’, an exhibition that honored the finale of Coastal Contemporary in April 2022.
As life shifted yet again in 2022, I took a position as executive assistant to a corporate CEO while continuing to offer website design, private coaching, portfolio reviews and content writing for artists. Throughout 2023, I stayed focused on picking up the pieces, re-establishing myself as an artist and remained committed to my illustration-a-day journaling ‘Project 365’.
My personal creativity is focused on unveiling the multiple levels of human and humanness. I wish to create visuals that push into new realm and transcend obvious assumptions. I am interested in quantum mysteries, the psyche, theater, animal nature, technology, communication, and ancient history. These elements are found unraveling within my imagery. Illusion and truth travel in unison – as an artist, I feel it is essential to reveal some of those intertwining moments.
My series and styles fluctuate between a more detailed realism and calculated orderliness, to a fantastically wild and intuitive approach. The latter brings a sense of centering to my life that has been in transition for the past several years. The intention behind my work is to express direct and raw emotions that people of all ages and walks of life can connect to on a deep subconscious level. While I draw upon personal experiences, I bear witness to global issues and manipulate my medium to reveal our universal shadows through the playful inner child. The most current body of work is immediate and unplanned – colorful and assertive. I utilize a spray bottle with water in one hand and brushes in the other, often ditching them to employ both hands ambidextrously, shifting paint with my fingertips. All of this is channeled through music; I cannot create without it. My process is solitary and a dance, where I am channeling memories, emotions, and mythologies. Often, I will spend hours working and reworking a surface, only to destroy and abandon everything and stick a landing in the final half hour of a long day’s efforts.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Most of us experience many pivotal moments in life, some of course are more extraordinary and impactful than others. Moving a family from Baltimore, Maryland to Rhode Island with a one-year-old and pregnant with a second in 2003, knowing only one person in the entire state, is a memorable one. From that point, it was all about learning how to adjust, expand and contract. I put my art career on hold and dedicated my creative energy to our children.
In 2019, I found myself leaving a thirty-year marriage and adjusting to single parenthood, operating a full-time business, and working as a real estate agent. I asked the universe for a gift (in any form) each day, and the message was delivered in ways I still cannot explain. It was one of the hardest years, but most enjoyable as I stepped back into my truest self. And then there was 2020. Living at home with two older teens and a third who we welcomed in for safekeeping from an unstable family environment was anything but easy. Their lives completely ripped away from them and conducting school through zoom, applying for college, graduating without ceremony, sans prom – painful to witness as a mother. Each solo trip to the grocery store, geared up like a soldier, felt as if I was shopping for Noah’s Ark; two of everything.
During this time, as we all became more aware of the fact that this c-19 was not going anywhere, the realities took shape and the gravity of the situation sunk in. I channeled myself into my gallery, Coastal Contemporary in Rhode Island, and crossed two bridges from North Kingstown to Newport to keep the balance and faith. I had lined up and curated a show with three artists titled ‘Step In Time’ for April that year. Oddly, many of the exhibitions, set in advance for that year, aligned with the times without knowing what we were headed into. Co-curated ‘Masc’ was the show that we shut the doors to the public on from mid-March through the end of April.
One of the artists in our April exhibition was invited to produce an installation, but given the fact that we would not be allowing any public into the space, she was able to build a much larger piece. We met each day, sporting our home-depot or make-shift bandit masks, and did the work only we could do as individuals. There was a tinge of scandal in us, as we were not immediate family and just straddling the line of what was allowable. I wrote and curated and she built with string, stone, shale, shells, metal, and glass, and incorporated some performance art. We documented through video, hosted a Zoom artist talk produced with the help of her partner, and I learned that live Instagram and creating and sharing the gallery’s stories online was more crucial, welcomed and appreciated than ever. I kept the shows going, crossed state borders to pick up art from artists who were uneasy or unable to cross and in May, re-opened for events, only missing one month’s reception in all of 2020. Not only did this rhythm keep me centered and joyful, it provided my roster and guest creatives with hope and purpose. During the full lock-down in April, this slower time allowed me to return to my own painting practice. I had basically abandoned this part of myself for the gallery in 2018, as it was intensely demanding and the most fun that I have ever experienced in a career. Making art of other’s art, giving opportunities, building bridges and collaborating was and is most rewarding to me. At the end of 2020, I gifted myself a solo at CCG, something I promised never to do. It was titled, BUNNI2020 and featured wild painted imagery along with self-portrait photography that celebrated my newly found freedom.
2022 by far was the most pivotal and emotionally challenging. I sold my home, let go of a beautiful studio, released years of memories and boxes of stuff, put three quarters of my life into storage, took on a new career, closed the gallery and moved from a rural, spacious home up to a small city apartment in Providence, RI. For the first time in my life, I was lost. Everything was gone, new, and different and I settled and grieved quietly and stayed close to my apartment. I walked alone endlessly through unfamiliar neighborhoods and sat in a nearby park. Eventually, I picked up the wedding veil I had saved from the dumpster on moving day and began experimenting again with self-portraiture utilizing my iphone. I posted those images daily until I completed number one hundred. And in 2023, I started my daily drawing ritual ‘Project 365’ and like magic, opportunities opened and began welcoming me back to my core being and power.
How did you build your audience on social media?
To name a few…
Persistence and consistency are key to building strong relationships on social media. Engaging your audience with an authentic, honest voice and presenting in a unique professional manner is critical. Use clean images and edit them to fit the proper format. Curate the two-dimensional ‘exhibition’ and be creative, taking pride in the appearance of your site when viewed as a whole. Include a biography, with websites and links to purchase if applicable. Pose questions that pique interest and create dialogue. Build the narrative through stories, share other people’s artwork, and include pertinent links, hashtags and tag any relevant individuals, associations, and/or businesses. Test the market and pay to boost posts or run advertisements and lead capture. If possible, it can be very rewarding to find other creatives to collaborate with, helping to broaden your reach and spread the messages you want the world to hear and see.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.artinmind.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sumobunni/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SumoBunni
Image Credits
Frank Crosby (2 images submitted) + Shari Weschler (all other images to self/artist being interviewed)