The Camel - Mixed Media Tapestry made from Upcycled Junk Mail -- "The Last Straw"

 The Last Straw.

It came to me in a dream. A lucid dream, where I was holding a baby camel. I laughed out loud, but stayed asleep. So vivid was this dream, that I immediately looked up the meaning of the dream.

The Last Straw

 

 

 Of course, a dream about a camel can be about endurance, long journeys, reaching goals, but it also can symbolize burdens. That resonated immediately... carrying too many problems on my shoulders, too many responsibilities, clinging to emotions instead of expressing them and releasing them.
WOW.
So profound... at this juncture of my life, I am thinking about these burdens, about letting go of emotional baggage, about the "things" that I've held on to for so long. 
A few things happened in my most innermost thoughts... more to do with people who I feel responsible for holding up, helping out, opinions I keep to myself, words not expressed...
And it was that dream that made me confront those thoughts, those plans, those unexpressed desires and pent up rage... and as I drove home from an acupuncture treatment, the words spilled out of my mouth. 
"That's the LAST STRAW!"
In my mind's eye was an image of a camel, standing in the desert, the heat of the sun radiating behind him, the blue sky around him. 
As with any composition, I start with a simple pencil drawing... and let my imagination go... let the impulse be the action... 
I keep junk mail, calendars, postcards, business cards, greeting cards, and other paper ephemera around. I use paper to create my compositions. 
After the pencil drawing, I began to paint. Just a bit... and began collecting, from boxes of paper, an assortment of photographs. Could be Drew Barrymore's pic on a Vanity Fair fly card, or a pic of someone's baby from a Christmas card... perhaps a photo of me, a greeting card's puppy dog or cartoon...a campaign postcard's featured candidate... and eureka, an enormous pile of photos cut into little squares. I used the squares to create the body of the camel. I created a coating mixed with some acrylic paint to soften the photos; some lighter, some darker, all a little hazy... and outlined the camel with black. 

What is the meaning of the people as camel? Well, they symbolize the past, the ghosts and traumas the myriad of experiences. They are not literal.

 
The background was also improvised, and became a sort-of tapestry / oriental rug / geometric design. 
I created it with squares, triangles, circles and flower designs.
 Junk mail, patterns, textures... from a huge variety of papers I've been hoarding.
As you see in the photos, my camel is hairy... furry? Made from variegated yarn in beige and brown tones, cut with tiny scissors and flung on a sticky surface.

 I added some rough ribbon tot he composition for a bridle, and created some tassels from yarn, ribbon and beads, added chains, bells and other decorative touches. 

Along the bottom are desert roses, also made from paper, which are a bit dimensional. These flowers are native to countries where camels are used as beasts of burden.

You may wonder why I do not attach large files or hi-res photos to these blogs. 
I have a reason. 
I have seen my work reproduced as prints at art fairs, and for sale as designs for other commercial products.
The process of creating is the necessity for me. Once I create a piece,
I no longer need to own it. I work out my issues and have all the self-talk while I am in the studio.
  After many weeks, I am done. This is truly a mixed-media work, a paper mosaic, a tapestry, a dream realized. A slight departure from 15+ years of paper mosaic portraits!
The camel is for sale, it is 36" high x 48" wide, on canvas. Please contact me if you are interested in owning this unusual work of art.

What's in a Face?

Wolf whistles...Scorn...Desire...Adoration...a Mother's Love...Rejection...Swoons.
It starts with the face.

Babies are born looking like their fathers...  so they'll know the child is theirs and won't run off. Well, at least that's what I've heard, and it is certainly true of me and of my own daughter.

What is attractive? Repulsive? Beautiful? Sexy? Attraction is physical, "chemical," intuitive. We respond to what we like. So, most of us are stuck with what we're born with, other "enhance" with products and poisons and knives...to reach an ideal...and that target is always moving.

One man's meat is another man's poison
One man's meat is another man's person

My Mother told me...never trust someone with thin lips, or close-set eyes.

So, What's in a Face?

After all...aren't most of our face comprised of two eyes, two lips, one nose? Are not our faces merely skin stretched [or sagging] over muscle and bone? What's the big deal?

And yet... so much is made of our visual appearance. If you've read my blog, seen my art or know me, you know I have been exploring how our "looks" relate to our own self-image, and the messages we hear and tell ourselves. This collage was originally completed several years ago, soon after I dealt with a slight change to my own face [no one sees it, but it is glaring to me] which altered my impression of myself and others. 

Included in this composition are photos, textures, verbiage, people I know, and many others I don't.
Here are some details. I'm in there somewhere...and I don't look like Kate Moss.

"LUNA" a Pareidolic Portrait [what's Pareidolia?]

This is "Luna," a new mixed media portrait.

 Materials are: Junk Mail, Acrylic Paint, Glitter, Textured Glazes.

Pareidolia is the experience of “seeing” something in a stimulus or an object that’s simply vague and random. An example is the Shroud of Turin. Remember when you were a child lying on your back in the grass, watching the clouds go by and you saw a bunny or a castle in the sky, or the man [or woman] in the moon? Or the Madonna on a piece of toast, or a cluster of cactus? Maybe you've even heard messages when records are played in reverse [number nine? number nine?].

Carl Sagan believed that the ability to recognize faces from a distance or in poor visibility was an important survival technique. While this instinct enables humans to instantly judge whether an oncoming person is a friend or foe, Sagan noted that it could result in some misinterpretation of random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces.
Leonardo da Vinci wrote about pareidolia as an artistic device. "If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills."

So often, people compare my work to those photo mosaics they've seen at Disneyland or in magazines... an image made up of thousands of photographs created in a computer.

Photo Mosaic at Disney

In fact, many people believe I use some sort of computer program to create my work. I'd like to say that no... I actually DRAW...PAINT...CUT...GLUE... using nothing more hi-tech than pencil, brush, scissors and sometimes and exacto knife.

So, I decided to tackle one of the most common Pareidolic images, the man in the moon... but I love women's faces better...

It's only a Paper Moon

I began by creating a monochromatic background and crescent moon in large squares - if you look closely, you'll see movie tickets [Knight & Day how apropo], greeting cards, advertisements, invitations, fly cards, postcards and photographs. Yes, I have a room full of paper. I save everything. I recycle everything. It took HOURS to cut and sort by tone all of those pieces! I reversed the progression on the moon.  It's only a Paper Moon!

Then the painting of Luna took shape... I kept to a somewhat monochromatic color scheme, only adding a bit of pink paper to the lips and greige shades for the hair.

Luna before the asteroids...

A Crater!

I was pretty happy when I got there, but never leaving well enough alone, I grabbed palette knives, brushes, glitter, gravel, textured gels and my own fingers to create peaks, valleys, craters and rocky textures.
This changed the perfectly flat "collage" into a textured moonscape. Now my woman in the moon looked like she was ON the moon!

This portrait, one of many in my collection of paper mosaic portraits is 30x40" on 1" museum wrapped canvas. Edges are painted black. Wired, ready to hang!

See more here: Schimmel Art Web Site

Ever Fallen in Love with Someone...

With someone you shouldn't've?

There are two songs that inspired this new piece, "Ever" - 

one is Queen Bitch by David Bowie, the other is  Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've) by the Buzzcocks...I like this version by Billy Talent.

You know the feeling - you're pissed - you're heart's in the basement your weekend's at an all time low... you're up on the 11th floor...gazing at your hotel walls...and you're phoning a cab, and you're stomach feels small...

You've fallen in love with someone you shouldn't have fallen in love with.

Love doesn't always end well. Sometimes it just STINKS. If you haven't been there yet, you will be someday. It's good to have a great song to blast and sing along with during those moments of fury. These two worked for me [oh, a long time ago, kiddies... I'm happily married].

So, here's a hot red-head. Naming her "Ever" just 'cause it's pretty. What YOU need to figure out is whether she's the mean one, or if she's the angry one because her lover is fooling around somewhere else [perhaps with someone in a bippity-boppity hat?]. 

"Ever" is a lovely mosaic created entirely from junk mail - 24x36" on canvas...like all my other art.

Have you seen my slideshow on Planet Green? 

Did you know I am teaching art classes in Phoenix?

Hope to hear from you - let me know what you think!

Sandhi

What's Happening Now... S A Schimmel Gold

At the moment...

The last few years have been a whirlwind of activities, many taking me away from and out of the studio. I've been distracted at times, and have participated in too many activities. I will spend the next 6 months hunkering down, concentrating on my new direction; re-shaping my work, paring down the messaging and preparing 10-12 large pieces for a serious showing.

I am not participating in a lot of events – you may notice my calendar is short of openings, shows & festivals. I am also not cranking out new pieces as much as I had for shows, etc. This was planned.

• For one thing, I had major surgery last week and am recuperating. It will be several weeks before I can return to my normal work schedule. The surgery date kept getting moved, so it was difficult to plan ahead or make a lot of commitments.

• Second, going to art festivals in this economic climate can be depressing – yes, I still get incredible reactions to my work, but I know a lot of people are hurting and just can't make purchases of luxury items... let's face it, art is a luxury!

• And third, after the Access Hollywood gift lounge, I am committed to completing several custom portraits for celebrities, so these custom pieces have been and will continue to tie up my time for a while longer.

• I have been asked to create a book, and also to teach workshops. I will be taking some time to explore this direction; investigate if, how and when I would move forward with these projects.

• But, most importantly, I have a series in mind that I believe will take me as an artist to a new level. My intention is to create a modern collection of Icons – using the traditional Russian Icon as an inspirational “jumping off” point – using my pop-art style & unusual color palettes to create something completely unique. And creating my own resource images.

  • I often use images provided by the advertising machine – whether for beauty or fashion or even celebrity.

    • For this series, I will style and photograph my own images.

    • Instead of using models or actors as subjects – I will use ordinary women and through my art – transform each of them into an Icon. A new mythology of women will go along with the series. Curious, yes?
      

  • I will continue to use advertising ephemera, junk mail and other “potential” debris to create my work, including found objects beyond the 2-dimensional.

    • In addition, all materials used to create the image will be non-toxic, acid-free and water-based. I will continue to upcycle, reuse, repurpose and recycle whenever possible.

  • I will be posting progress and photos on my blog, so keep posted.

Am I still selling art? You bet.

I do have a one-woman show at Translations Gallery in Denver – opening May 1, 2009.

I still have work at the American Gallery in Carmel and Raw Style in Santa Monica – both in California. And, I have several pieces here at my home studio – private appointments are available. You can always check my site to see what is available... and send me an email for pricing.

One last thing - the name game: S A Schimmel Gold... Sandhi, Sandy, Sandra...etc. What's the deal?

S. A. - I like using my initials. They're not gender nor age specific.

I started using Sandhi about a year ago as a new way to spell Sandy. It's a sanskrit word - the meaning works. I like it.

Schimmel Gold. Okay, I was Schimmel for SO long, "Schimmel Art" [the business name] started when I was still single.

When I married Mr. Gold 4 1/2 years ago, I added Gold to the end of my name. No hyphen.

I'm not a jeweler.

A lot of people still call me "Schimmel" - some use both. I don't really mind, but Mr. Gold does. And I am proud to be his wife, so I like having Gold at the end of my name.

I look forward to talking more!