Shut Up and F*@$ing Kiss Me, Already!

Shut up and Kiss Me...again! Again!

I've always wanted to show my art in Miami. It's been a goal to get into Art Basel, but I'm not represented by a gallery that will be there. So, I found another way to be Art Basel-adjacent.
I have a few things I want to show, but the most popular image I've ever created is called...
"Shut Up and Kiss Me."
I got out the sketch book and played with an image I've done before... a few times, in different sizes, different color schemes, different styles, different compositions each time.
They're not the same!
They're all one of a kind, all drawn by hand, using a whole group of new materials. I improvise as I go...after all, the impulse is the action!

Newest version, bad lighting...in my studio just after completion.

I decided to share a bit of my process with you by taking photos as I went along...  you'll see, if you look closely, I change the drawing, the color scheme, and make adjustments to different features. And, it's all done by hand, there are no computer programs that I use, just old-fashioned ART.
I hope you like seeing the process over a length of time.

Some of the strips of orange junk mail I was sorting...and my high tech cutting tool!

One version, in a private collection in New York

Another version, in a private collection in Texas

Another version, in a private collection in Mexico

The newest version is 30x40" - and will debut in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida - November 15th, 2014
You're invited!

click here for more info on the opening

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then here:

The custom portrait process...and "inside the studio" insights.

It's his birthday, he's in his 70's. He is getting married. 

He started coloring his hair a little...

His family wants to give him something special.

A Portrait. From me!

I get these photos through email, and put together a quick sketch to capture the best of both of them.  I picked the photo of "her" from above [her eyes were the biggest] "him" from the top photo, and his hair color from the one on the right.

Quick Sketch in Paint on Canvas

After drawing and painting, I begin the process of cutting up hundreds and hundreds of pieces of paper. What started out as a simple mosaic process has become an incredibly detailed method...I've been doing this for so long, it's just second nature and difficult to explain!

There is a set of old bedroom furniture in the studio [it was mine when I was a kid] - all junk mail, old calendars, postcards, menus, fly cards, card stock, greeting cards and other ephemera go into those drawers. 

Before I start a new project, I spend a few hours going through that stuff - cutting it and sorting into colors...those piles go into other drawers.

Back to the easel, I sort the colors I've chosen to use by shade and lay them out on a large table. I work one color at a time, cutting and pasting [glueing] each piece one at a time, cutting again and again to fit. Sometimes, they're nothing but a sliver... I might need tweezers to hold the tiny piece, I might need an exacto to trim... The process takes hundreds of hours... during this time, I am looking at the subject's photos...constantly going back and forth, tweeking whatever I need to "get it right."

Thank goodness for NPR and Pandora and PBS online... I can listen to stories, music, comedy and might learn something while I am working or discover a new artist whose music grabs my attention.

Sometimes one of the dogs wanders into the studio. Usually Farfel, who wants me to hold her, but that ain't happening. But she will sit on my hot pink chair and whine... I wish I had a baby bjorn for dachshunds.

In the morning hours, after I have my tea, I often work in whatever I was sleeping in the night before. T-shirt, Yoga pants...Hopefully, no one will come to the door. I work odd hours, all day, with breaks to check my email and see what my friends are doing on Facebook... or talk to friends or family... always wandering back in and picking up where I left off. I am back in the studio at night - often WAY into the wee hours. When I am in the mood...the "zone" I don't know where the time goes. 

The studio is carpeted and I am always trailing it around - embellishing the house with slivers of paper that have stuck to my toes or my socks... and at some point, vacuuming is necessary. Byproduct of my work.

After all the paper is applied, I go back and repaint the eyes, teeth, whatever makes sense. Whatever colors you see - that's the color of the paper. After 24 hours, I apply a sealer and UV coating. Edges of the canvas are painted...usually black.

Here's a small pic of the happy couple [a little glare on the right side] before it got shipped away to enhance another home.

By the way, I don't make my art for me... I make it for YOU!

Thanks for reading!

S

"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

Warsaw Waiter... huh?

Women's faces. Yeah, that's my usual... ["idiom, sir?"] genre. What's with the guy with the curly hair?

A moment to back up. I read a lot. Books, Magazines. I get way too many...

and today, as soon as I stop typing... I am going to go have an "education" day and pick a bunch of the magazines up, go through them once and for all, glean everything I want from them. And then recycle them.

Yeah, I even recycle magazines.
Not by putting them in my art, though... I magazine bomb. I would yarn bomb, or photo bomb...but I can't do everything.

When I go to the library, or doctor, or dentist, or car wash...anywhere magazines are lying around, I innocently plop them down and leave them for someone else to enjoy. And, by the way, nothing trashy. No People, no US, no Star Magazine.

Okay, anyway... I was probably reading Town & Country... or Travel & Leisure... or Conde Nast Traveler. Came across an interesting photo of a fellow, a waiter at a restaurant in some eastern European country. It was NOT Poland, I remember... Maybe it was a "stan" country -Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, or maybe a Baltic state... or Ukraine. Anyway... this dude looked pretty cool. His attire, his hair, his NOSE harkened back to an earlier time. I created his portrait out of junk mail, as usual... but he looked too modern.

I found some crackle glaze... actually created for ceramics. I thought I could create an "Antique" look by creating tiny cracks [this stuff by Modern Masters is great, by the way]. I used to love making ceramics when I was a kid,

and remembered how to use it to my advantage.

I used the glazes [there are a few steps] and rubbed dark brown ink into the cracks... let it settle and then rubbed it off. It worked, and I got the effect I wanted.

My husband makes fun of me and my crazy ideas. But a lifetime of art experimentation, etc. Years of being a display artist, prop designer, pattern maker, sample maker, and all around use-your-noodle, you're clever after all... has me creating and taking risks. I love this guy, he belongs on the wall of someone's library, or in a home filled with antiques [unlike most of my other art...] and yeah, he is definitely NOT from Poland, but I'm a big fan of alliteration. So sue me, title Police.
Here's my Warwaw Waiter - 16x20" mosaic portrait - he's in a wooden frame but it's not shown here:

Sandhi Schimmel Gold's Warsaw Waiter