VIDEO: ‘Inside the studio with Alex Podesta’

New Orleans-based, North Carolina-born artist Alex Podesta is, quite possibly, best known in this city for his “bunny men” installations — rabbit/human creatures designed to mimic Podesta’s own visage — carefully stationed at a few prominent spots along our landscape. But the bunnies are just one series of works from the artist. Similar to the bunnies, the vast majority of Podesta’s other works are 3-dimensional, whimsical moldings that he says are culled from memories and images from his own childhood.

“I started thinking about a little, one-piece pajama thing that I had when, I don’t know, I was probably five years-old, four-years-old,” Podesta says of the inspiration behind the iconic bunny men. “It wasn’t a bunny costume but it was a thing with padded feet, that, when zipped-up, it felt like I was protected or invincible, and I didn’t really watch cartoons but I’d seen the Bugs Bunny cartoon and his feet were white, so it made me think of a bunny costume.”

Melissa Carpenter, a student in the Department of Film and Theatre at the University of New Orleans, speaks with Podesta in his unique studio about his his current exhibitions and more about the inspiration behind his bunny pieces.

Read more about Podesta here.