Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Life. Death. Repeat. A Cynthia von Buhler Interview

Cynthia von Buhler chatting with author Neil Gaiman.

Bryan Reesman interviewed me for his popular blog Attention Deficit Delerium.

Some artists are difficult to pigeonhole, and that’s a great thing.
I have known Cynthia von Buhler for fifteen years, from her earlier performance art days with the female dominant, fetish-oriented group Women Of Sodom and her beguiling, edgy and romantically inspired painting to her expanding career path as both a graphic novel artist and children’s book author and illustrator. While she certainly possesses a very distinct style, Cynthia is not that easy to categorize. She has worked in the visual arts and music. That diversity also extends into her life — she occasionally hosts really fun parties populated by a wide variety of equally eclectic people. Her recent summer bash at her woodland compound in Connecticut featured a live play that was an improvised mash-up of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang performed outdoors near midnight. She played Snow White. No matter what she works on, Cynthia brings her own unique perspective into the project, and she likes to challenge people’s perceptions and expectations.

Cynthia von Buhler drawing a page from Evelyn Evelyn: A Tragic Tale in Two Tomes. Photograph by Seth Kushner.

Cynthia’s work has run the gamut of extremes, from two feline-friendly children’s books (The Cat Who Wouldn’t Come Inside and But Who Will Bell The Cats?) to colorful, striking paintings with unusual mixed media elements (such as fruit, a half-melted candle, even a syringe) to a vending machine display called Cynth-O-Matic, which dispensed packaged samples of her body hair and various fluids. (Seriously.) Some of Cynthia’s recent and upcoming projects include illustrating the Evelyn Evelyn graphic novel A Tragic Tale In Two Tomes, a children’s chapter book and a graphic novel about her grandparents.
Read the interview HERE.