Background (more at link):

https://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/article_a4b752d1-eaa3-5272-b230-cef1a50417d5.html

Creator of bunny-men figures serious as well as whimsical

Alex Podesta: ‘My works demand laughter’

DEC 31, 2014

Born in North Carolina and raised in southeast Virginia, Podesta says he always thought of himself as a Southerner — until he moved to New Orleans. “Now my ties here are so deep that you’d have to force me to leave,” he said recently with a smile.

He comes from a long line of artists — an art-director grandfather worked with filmmaker Luis Bunuel, an artist grandmother with muralist Diego Rivera — a fact that taught him mostly, he says, that making a living creatively is a struggle.

“I began digging into myself for more source material,” he explained. “I had this fun, crazy childhood growing up on an abandoned chicken farm, and I started thinking about that and the freedom of those years. I had a one-piece, zip-up pair of pajamas with feet, and then I thought about cartoons and Bugs Bunny, and then I thought of superheroes. There’s some Velveteen Rabbit in there, and the security of a stuffed bunny.”