Check Out Rahela Laquidara’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rahela Laquidara

Hi Rahela, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Much of my success and life changes in the past 4 years have a lot to do with the collaborations of myself and Kelly Stiles. A mutual friend introduced Kelly and I. We moved in together right before the pandemic. At the time, we were just friends. We didn’t really know each other too well. When the pandemic hit, we had a whole lot of time to spend together since everything was shut down. We started collaborating on art and music in that strange world. We found we were extremely well matched in nearly every way (except tennis and soccer. I’m terrible!) Not only did we fall in love, but our collaborations were so complimentary that we ended up publishing a surrealistic coloring book in July of ’22, called “Book of the Bizarre.”

The pandemic was a really hard time for everyone. The coloring book and our musical collaborations (our band is Bambooboo) really got us through.

We didn’t set out to simply make a coloring book at first. It came out of a much simpler artistic challenge. In the summer of 2020, Kelly and I were going to spend some time apart, and he challenged both of us to create a coloring page – for the other person to color upon return.

I remember being so nervous and procrastinating until the last minute. I created the “cassette slug” image as my first piece. He created “National Geomorphic” as his page, and a bonus “Tamandua Worship”. They may be pages in a coloring book, but actually, each of our pages are individual works of art. They all have titles and stories, things that motivated us to create them and separate ideas we hope people take away from them.

I learned recently that many coloring books you buy are stolen works of art that some underpaid graphic designer gets hired to steal from the internet to produce a generic coloring book with flowers or animals as quick as possible. Our pages, in contrast, are each little works of art. We designed and hand drew all of them. Not only did we hand draw them but we did many of them in comic book inking style, which I had to learn about. Kelly is a comic book artist. He’s prolific and has a vast catalogue of his series “Warship Lollipop” and “The Cobra and the Mermaid.” They are both wonderful and he really doesn’t care much to publicize them. He just makes these well crafted genius things and gives them away for free. I could never match his artistry or industriousness. He’s simply an inspiration to be around and I learned a lot about inking during the making of our book. I am now really interested in inking and you can see my growth in the coloring book.
The rest of the pages that followed are characterized by the initial challenge that produced from both of us, a surrealist tone as the style of our first pages. We continued that through the rest of the book but it’s amazing and odd that it happened as it did! Remember, we were apart during our first challenge. At that point we hadn’t really had too many chances to collaborate, or even see each others style. Our drawings automatically looked like they should be in the same book. “Cassette slug” is some airborne train combined with slug goo and cassette tape boxcars. Kelly’s Tamandua Worship is a fantastical scene showing little rodents and birds worshipping a strange beast in a hidden moonlit clearing. I couldn’t believe how complimentary our chosen styles were to each other. We are both philosophical and silly. And each page is like a psychological Rorschach test for the colorist to explore. We ended up with this family-friendly but very strange, atypical coloring book. It’s surrealistic, tragic, beautiful, casual, relatable, fantastic. There is a page for everyone.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Since I had a lot of catching up to do in my illustration craft and was working full time, it took me a while to become happy with my images. Kelly was waiting for me to finish for a good 6 months after he already completed his half of the book.

We then had to deal with technology to put it on amazon print-on-demand and to get it published through 48 hr books. Both required different formatting. It was zero percent fun. Neither of us like sitting in front of a computer and as a result, it was a struggle just to learn how to scan and format the pages correctly for print. It seriously might have been more work than the art. Or at least felt like it.
We determined that if we only had print-on-demand we would be very sad in our analog hearts, so we also had physical copies made.
Then we had to figure out how to sell the 120 physical copies. We then found out that Kelly hates vending. I have a lot of retail experience so I didn’t mind figuring out the vending process. I actually really like it, but only when we are making sales, otherwise it is not too enjoyable. I discovered our product is not for everyone. There are different locations that are more suitable for us than others. (For example: We don’t do all that well at gun shows.)

Kelly and I have different talents that became evident. I think what has been great about that is a combination of us giving each other space and understanding that we don’t both have to do everything. Kelly hates vending, I don’t mind and even enjoy it. Every once in a while he’ll join me anyway and it’s very nice. Kelly and I have different areas of expertise and we give each other grace with that. I hate the technology stuff so Kelly does a lot of that and he was our quality control surrounding the images. As long as there is a balance of labor, it’s great.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Kelly : I’m always making art. I create a new Warship lollipop every year that is a series of humorous intellectual hand drawn comics in one book. For a few years, I’ve been working on caricatures from yearbooks of schools I attended. I drew every student and staff member of my 8th grade yearbook.
I’ve also enjoyed making spin off art from the coloring pages I designed. Both Rahela and I have really amused ourselves by using the images in our book again and again in other works of art. We may use a different medium or change it slightly to create an entirely new work.

Rahela: I have been working on a series of batik fabric dying works. I do a few things here and there to enhance techniques that I am teaching at the time. I recently made a Lino cut of flowers because I was teaching printmaking. Sometimes my art or what I’m up to is not necessarily any series of isolated works of art that you can pick up and hold. Sometimes it’s the creative aspects and thoughtfulness of organizing a class structure or event that fosters other artists growth.
I was a high school Art teacher for 9 years. I’m known for teaching. I now teach art classes at arts centers and other venues. I use our coloring book to talk about color theory and technique. The class is called “Color Pencil Magic.” I consider teaching one of my artistic mediums. I have taught Colored Pencil Magic at the Durham Arts Council and I am there again 9/13, I’ve taught at Durham Hi-Wire Brewery and I’m there again 8/25. I’ve taught at The Scrap Exchange in Durham and I’ve had an opportunity to teach the class at The CoLab in Raleigh and on 8/24, I’m at Woodbine Winery in Virginia.

I’m also putting together a huge art retreat in Virginia called Figure Fruit and Field for 9/26-9/29. It’s on 204 acres of land and we’ll have figure modeling, campfires, primitive camping, themed still lives, sound healing, yoga, complimentary breakfast and dinner as well as the 204 acres of landmarks and nature to draw.
Figurefruitandfield.com
Other than that, Kelly and I love to stay fresh with local art meet ups for figure drawing and personal work. I love the Colab’s drawing meet ups at the Witch in Raleigh and the Scrap Exchange’s Wednesday night get togethers. This area offers so much.

We would like to be known for our band. Our very artistic band defies genres. We mentioned it earlier but I will say that we have our first album release 8/23 . I’m proud to report that our album release is much delayed because I insisted that we hand draw our lyric page inserts for our CD’s like back in the old days. So when you look at our CD insert, each song has matching images to engage more senses and create a multisensory experience.

Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
Kelly’s Books: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Jeff smith’s “Bone.” Walt Kelly’s “Pogo.” Alexis Deacon’s “Curse of the chosen.” Maximum traffic’s “truth be known.”

Rahela’s books: Jennifer Dasal’s “Art curious”
Robert Berger’s “Ways of seeing.”
Elizabeth L. Katz’s “Themes and Foundations of Art”
Kevin Mooseles “The Outbreak” & “President Zombie”

Both Kelly and Rahela:
John Stiles “Bullwhip 26”
Todd Levins “First They Take Your Heart”

Podcast: “The Art History Babes”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Bookofthebizarre.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookofthebizarre/tagged/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087465107791
• Other: https://bambooboo.bandcamp.com/