Kristine Schomaker is something of a Renaissance woman – public relations pro, project space owner, magazine publisher, and artist.
As a working artist, Schomaker started Shoebox PR in February 2014 after realizing there was a huge need for artist marketing services.
“There are more artists than there are PR companies. I have a degree in Art and Art History. As a former instructor, I wanted to continue supporting artists any way I could. As an artist myself, I knew there was a need for artist support. I created my company to help artists in areas they aren’t able to.”
She notes that being an artist today is more than just creating the work.
“Today artists have to be entrepreneurs. A lot of artists don’t know where to begin. I come from an administrative background as well as my education history so it was natural for me to become a teacher, a supporter for artists.”
Shoebox PR is not a traditional PR firm, but rather more of a support network for artists.
“We help artists run their social media accounts, we do PR for their solo exhibitions, we help artists create community and build bridges in the art world that will help them persevere in there career,” she relates.
Her company also does social media promotion using Shoebox PR’s network of art influencers, and researches and filters calls for art/grants/residencies.
“We offer career consultation and guidance, studio visits, consult on artist statements, websites and more.”
Schomaker has success stories which include feature stories in major arts publications such as Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, Beautiful Bizarre, Huffington Post, LA Magazine, Konbini, Creators Project and here on Diversions LA among others.
Along with assisting artists with coverage from other publications, Schomaker has also begun her own, Art & Cake.
“I felt there was a need for more writing on art. There are a few great local art publications, but there aren’t enough for all of the artists. I wanted to add to the art world conversation. I wanted to support the lesser known art establishments, alternative venues and artists. Along the way, I realized I am also able to support art writers who deserve more attention and need more space to write,” she attests.
As an artist, much of the services she provides are tied to how she herself would like to be treated as an artist.
“I am a multidisciplinary artist working to crush stereotypes and demythicize ideas of beauty. My current work is part of a new cross-platform project called “An Ode to a Lost Love” whose leitmotif addresses the de(con)struction of self in relation to society’s perception/projection/reflection of beauty,” she explains. “This work focuses on the complexities of gender identity, body image, and the societal privileging of women’s physical beauty over character and intellect.”
The series already includes painting on canvas and mannequins, sculptural installation, digital animation made in Second Life, and narrative photography and video.
“I am a cultural producer who reaches outside of the studio to extend my creative energies and pursuits to my community. Shoebox PR, Art & Cake and Shoebox Projects are all an extension of my work as an artist.”
And speaking of Shoebox Projects, Schomaker has created her own gallery/workshop space as another avenue for artists to promote and show their work.
“I’m lucky that I had the perfect space in my loft,” she says. “Artists are finding new ways to create, show, and sell. I started Shoebox Projects in November 2016 with month-long residencies. They’ve all been exceptional and fun.”
With so much going on, it may be hard for Schomaker to fit everything she’s doing into a “Shoebox” – but she’s certainly succeeding.
That’s right, unstoppable – that’s DWF20, with its wide ranging variety of films that are truly as “fiercely independent” as the fest proclaims.
Grief
The first competition feature we took in was Grief, a film written as a catharsis after the loss of an unborn baby. Director/writer/star Kevin Renwick took on the volatile subject of the death of a child, adding in suicide and of course, the titular grief, in a compellingly watchable film that took two years to complete.
GriefTomorrow Maybe
Next up, Tomorrow, Maybe, a well-acted potboiler about an ex-con dad, his estranged daughter, and her abusive marriage. Jace Daniel, Roy Kirk 1st, and Robert Blanche wrote, with Blanche also starring; director Jace Daniel compelling helmed a story that grew from workshopping and table reads.
Tomorrow Maybe
Above, director Cat Hostick on the set of The Meaning of Life.
Meaning of life
On Tuesday, The Meaning of Life was a weepie about a teen musician and his fortuitous meeting with a 9-year-old cancer patient at the local hospital where he works. Writer director Cat Hostick expertly wrung the pathos from her script, with the music of Canadian pop celeb Tyler Shaw a standout.
Meaning of life
Chance, a wonderful 3-D animated story about pit bulls trained to fight against their nature, was decidedly not directed at children. Still, it was a sweet story with a wonderfully modulated script; a message movie with a real heart. This was the film that brought tears for me. Writer Kenny Young and director Kenny Roy drew expert performances from their voice cast, and were inspired by a friend of a friend whose lovable dog was entered in a fight. Heartbroken, the pair worked for 7 years to get the story to screen. Terrific score, great cause, too.
ChanceChanceChance
I flat out loved Imitation Girl, writer/director Natasha Kermani’s deeply original story about an alien and her doppelganger earth girl “Visual motif is of yin and yang. We wanted the story of a fresh creature who comes to earth and she was welcomed.” Kermani added “I am actually a musician and filmmaker. I knew lead actress Lauren Ashley Carter and I wanted to do something about structure. About twins. I’m a Gemini,” she laughed.
Imitation GirlImitation Girl
A packed house gasped and shrieked over the horror film Lore, based on Native American legends. Shot on location in Idaho, the film is full of well-timed jumps and scares. The story was in part shaped by the beautiful location that the filmmakers chose; a harrowing location as it turned out with cold weather, storms, and an altitude of 8000-9000 feet haunting the crew in reality even as their characters are haunted on screen. Writer/directors Christian Larsen and Brock Manwill know how to thrill and chill, and offer a smart, ambiguous ending in the bargain.
LoreLoreLore
More Dances with Films on tap tomorrow – why not join us in viewing the Thursday-Sunday slate and find filmmaking magic right in the middle of Hollywood.
What are you doing tomorrow through Sunday? Joining us, we hope, for the second half of Dances with Films 20, the terrific independent film festival that serves up one interesting film after another. The fest’s trailer proclaims “My life is a movie…” and you’ll surely feel that it is if you spend a few days at the TCL Chinese.
We have never seen a film in three years of coverage that has not intrigued us. Sure, some have blown us away, some have not. But they are all, yes, every one, worth watching. Such a full slate of films and such a carefully curated selection is rare on the festival circuit. The festival, whose tag line this year is “Unstoppable” has 75 world premieres, 36 west coast premieres, and opening and closing night films by DWF alumni filmmakers.
American Folk
The festival opened a week ago, Thursday with an opening night double bill of American Folk and Missing in Europe.
American Folk was a pitch perfect film which director David Heinz called an “honor” to have open the festival. Starring Joe Purdy and Amber Rubarth as two strangers and folk musicians stranded in California in the aftermath of 9/11 and cancelled flights, this road trip across America was moving in a way that many films about the tragedy of that day are not. The film took things to an intimate level, making the intimacy universal in part through the power of music.
American Folk
“I think the experiences many of us had, even if not in New York City at the time, were equally profound,” Heinz related. “I felt this story had not been told on the screen before.”
American Folk
The film’s depicted journey and the filmmakers’ actual trek took 3500 miles. “It was a movie largely about the kindness of strangers, and we experienced that too. ” Rubarth had never acted before when the 13-person crew began their trek which initially ran for 20 days with additional shorter pick-up trips totally 13 additional days.
A profound and beautiful film, the poetry both visually and in the script made a perfect way to open the fest.
Missing in Europe
Next up was Missing in Europe, an entirely different film altogether. Written, directed, and primarily starring women, this was a distaff spin on Liam Neeson’s father figure in Taken. Writer Jenny Paul and director Tamar Halpern put together a nail-biting thriller about a missing daughter, a fierce cybersecurity expert/mom, corrupt cops, and sex traffickers.
Missing in Europe
Director Halpern, a five-times-DWF alum, shot in just 12 days in Serbia. “We’ve seen many films about human traffic, but in ours, a man doesn’t save the girls, a woman does, a smart woman with brains and passion.”
The page-turner script was alot of fun for Halpern. “This is a big departure for me, it was a true collaboration. I didn’t write it but really enjoyed the project, and our Serbian crew.”
Cassidy Red
On Friday, Cassidy Red, from director Matt Knudsen, was a fresh take on a classic western, depicting vengeance sought in a town at the edge of the Arizona Territory. Beautifully shot and packed with visceral heat, this is a great take on a genre that is too often left in the dust.
Cassidy Red
The supernatural thriller, Inheritance, was also strong; the setting in small town Cayucos, Calif. was fresh, and the script intense.
Inheritance
Saturday and Sunday brought us shorts and more shorts – and every one of them stellar. Seriously – tough to find a single flaw in any of the fine films in Shorts Block 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. Regret: not being able to take in Shorts Block 3. DWF co-founder Leslee Scallon programs shorts along with her team, and has done an exciting job of mixing comedy, pathos, drama, and thrillers alike.
Competition Shorts Group 1
Starting at the top of our weekend shorts marathon, in Shorts Block 1, Still Here was a personal take about relationships – why we are in them, and why we return to those perhaps best left behind. Orange Dreams is a nostalgic look back at the burgeoning emotions of a middle schooler in the 80s. Faceless Man, based on the filmmaker’s father’s short story, literally depicted a man who wakes up to find his face has been replaced with a mirror. The make-up alone was a three-hour process on a four-day shoot – often in 115 degree heat. All the Marbles was made to celebrate the director’s own family and a recently passed brother and grandfather; the charming, rhyming fable about a boy who defeats a greedy thug at his own game – marbles – was delightful. Warm Springs was, by contrast, devastating. Inspired by the director’s childhood, shot in a small town in Northern California, the story of what happens when an unwonted little brother tags along with an older crowd, was riveting, and was one of my favorites of the festival. Boy in the Dark also centered on childhood, a fictionalized account of the director’s own, including bullying, depression, art, and all.
In Shorts Block 2, The Knackerman was a black and white standout, writer/director Tom Shrapnel’s portrait of an aging knacker, who faces his own mortality while seeing to the disposal of dying horses. Jouska, a beautifully surreal take on an old man’s guilt for horrific misdeeds, was fierce and nightmarish. Flower was a tense, delicate portrayal of a young sex worker and three very different clients.
Competition Shorts Group 4
Shorts Block 4 gleamed with film gems, including a poignant take on mental illness in Miriam is Going to Mars; Burying Amber, an elegaic piece inspired by the director’s conversation with a friend who was burying a pet; and Soul Candy, set in a book store and inspired by a conversation with the director’s two daughters about searching for a job and which was epically shot in only 12 hours. Also screening: Subtext, a meet-not-so-cute comedy hilariously centering on an errant text message created by the skilled team at Community Productions; and Three Skeleton Key, based on a classic short story, a harrowing tales of rats attacking a lighthouse. Director Andrew Hamer noted it was a story about contained paranoia that he always wanted to see on a big screen. He used 20 to 30 live rats in filming – “They live on Fruit Loops and peanut butter,” he related.
Exposure – director and d.p.
Shorts Block 5 was another terrific two hour set of films. Here, Exposure, produced through Florida State University, was one terrific edge-of-the-seat experience from director/writer, Mary Jeanes, about climber friends trapped on a ledge. “I’m a climber. I had to cling to the side of the cliff to get the shots I wanted,” Jeanes noted. Awol was originally a class project whose only rule was no dialog. The story of a soldier in wartime struggling to survive was tough and involving. Crossing Fences, which depicted an historic attempt to escape what was then East Germany, presented a challenge for director/writerAnnika Pampel, who was essentially shooting her own grandparents story. “Period shooting caused a lot of difficulties, not to mention filming actors in an actual sinking boat,” she attested.
Competition Shorts Group 5
Confection was the outgrowth of a script competition seeking a story about misfits; the lighthearted story was filmed in a small town with colorful streets, the perfect setting for the whimsical coming of age story set in part at a candy factory. This is That Night, shot in a sumptuous black and white was the movie that writer/starJonathan Marballi wanted to make when he was sixteen, he says. “I pulled in all of my date stories.” Shot in a single day by director Matt Braunsdorf, Marbelli and co-lead Kris Wiener had a natural comic rapport honed from working together at Upright Citizens Brigade comedy theater.
Competition Shorts Group 6
Shorts Block 6 included the crowd pleasing supernatural comedy/drama of Alfred J Hemlock, where protagonists had best not “wish they were dead” when having a bad day with Alfred around. Fiendishly clever. With Rohewa, an acronym that skinheads use for racial war, extremism is at the heart of this story inspired by a true tale of a former teen skinhead who changed when he went to arts college. La Sirena was equally haunting – the tale of the monster inside, of women in a fishing village and a cruel fisherman, the raw seaside setting an intrinsic part of the film’s delicate balance between horror and feminism. Daniel Gomez’ First Night was based on a true story. This comic tale of a woman on the run – in the film from a hit man, in reality from a cab driver she couldn’t pay – was deft and smart. Limbus, a dream-like exploration of the thoughts of a man in a coma, was a visual tour de force.
Competition Shorts Group 6 – Alfred J. Hemlock himself in hat, center
Next up: a take on feature films viewed after our binge watching of brilliant shorts.
It’s appropriate that artist Kate Carvellas has a solo show at an Altadena Gallery known as McGinty’s Gallery at the End of the World. After all, Carvellas is intent on making her own marks on this earth – possibly, prolifically, all the way to the end of it.
“When I began making art in 2004 after a hiatus of many years, it was made purely from either borrowed images or objects. But, slowly, over time, I began to make my own marks on my work. That ‘marking’ has led to full blown abstract paintings that evolve either purely from my subconscious or using my own photographs as a springboard. Abstracting reality,” Carvellas explains.
Her works are dynamic and bold, and she wants to get bolder.
“I would love to create large, mixed media paintings that incorporate abstract painting, collage, assemblage and my photography. I can’t quite see that work in my mind’s eye yet. But, I believe it is bubbling under the surface waiting to come out. I would also love to create large sculptural assemblages. Right now, the only thing holding me back is space and money,” she laughs.
Carvellas’ sculptural pieces employ found objects. Her choice in materials is often based upon items that draw her to them. “I am drawn to the rusty and discarded. Old metal and wooden objects speak to me the most. I love uniting disparate objects that are old or used and giving them new life and meaning as part of a larger whole.”
Whether working with sculpture or on canvas, the artist says her work “almost always comes from my subconscious and is intuitive. I rarely know the meaning of my work until it is finished.”
When it comes to her assemblages, she notes that her work is like putting a puzzle together. She says it starts with “Looking through my collection of objects and finding ones that speak to me and to each other.” As to her paintings, she asserts they arise from one of two places. “Either I will suddenly ‘see’ a painting in my mind’s eye and then need to get it onto canvas or I will use one of my photographs as a springboard. But, even then, the painting is intuitive.”
Carvellas calls her favorite type of project whatever she is currently working on. She’s currently working on about four different series at one time.
“I would get horribly bored if I had to make the same kind of art all in a row, over and over again. The assemblages and paintings seem to satisfy different parts of me. The paintings are so healing. They bring to me to a place emotionally and mentally that I would say is close to bliss. The assemblages are more of a challenge.”
Want to see Carvellas mark her spot in the artistic world? Visit The Gallery at the End of the World this weekend, June 3rd & 4th during the Altadena and Pasadena open studios tour from 11 to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
The Gallery at the End of the World is located at 2475 N. Lake Ave. Altadena, CA
