I get lots of requests for tattoos. I love that! Dang, people want a permanent imprint, that is the
ultimate compliment! Thank you! I love those that I have seen.
I am guessing since my work is out there, there’s some tattoos of my artwork I don’t know about.
I would love to see pictures!
I have been asked on a regular basis for custom designs. Here’s the deal: no. But here are some
things you might find work for you.
People can also use pictures of my work posted on the internet, pictures you took at a
show, books, articles, wherever you encounter my work.
The drawings included in this post might be easier to translate than glass pieces and seem
more “tattoo-like” to me. I prepared them with the intention of making tattoo flash. Also,
people have been asking a lot for specifically for these botanical images.
The designs are free for your personal use. If you like my work, it would be lovely if you pointed
people in the direction of one of my social media accounts (@judithschaechter) and please, please
send me pictures, but that is the only payment I want.
The reason I want you to use pre-existing artwork is that I do not want to come up with fresh,
new custom art. It is time consuming. It’s impossible for me to make a drawing without
completely getting wound around that axle, overthinking it in 360 time-sucking directions.
Perfectionism creeps in, and before you know it, I either get overwhelmed or it takes focus away
from my actual studio projects or both. Even retrofitting existing artwork is distracting. When
people say: “Don’t put too much work into it, just whip something up”, that’s impossible for me.
So, I am not going to make something special just for you. Not even for money. Not even if I
love you lots.
SO: Regarding the images posted here (or anywhere, actually), it is A-OK by me to have
someone alter them to your specific specifications, specifically. Just don’t ask me to do that! Your
tattoo artist may have some ideas about what would work best with your body, etc. That’s
important.
Some of the drawings are black and white, go ahead and color them—or have your tattoo person
color them or whatever, just don’t make more work for me.
Here are my terms—copyright is presumed, and it remains with ME. I own the designs. I am
not licensing them to anyone. I am sharing for your personal use. I would object if someone went
into the “Judith Schaechter Tattoo Business”. I am fine with sharing, but I want to be the one
doing the sharing! I don’t want this to be stolen out from under me for someone else to profit
from.
I am also not licensing the work. Again: sharing for your personal use.
I am basically OK with “use without permission” (it feeds my ego and means I am popular,
BLAH BAH BLAH) but again I would probably object if someone went into the “Judith
Schaechter Tattoo Business”.
As for modifying the designs, it’s also fine by me to just use a section of a drawing rather than the
whole thing. These are drawings I made for stained glass projects, so they tend to be
complicated.
Covid taught me how to walk. Before that, I rode a bike everywhere and my hip flexors tightened into the kind of rubber bands you associate with orthodontia. During covid, something happened to my eyesight which turned out to be this. I stopped riding my bike because my depth perception was crap and I started walking. Soon my hip flexors sorted themselves out and the unthinkable happened. I fell in love with walking!
Second piece of contextual info: before UArts imploded, I was an adjunct professor of "Interdisciplinary Fine Art" (they had folded their renowned and fantastic Crafts Program in 2019, apparently the first of a series of giant heartbreaks associated with UArts, where I was employed for 30 years). I was teaching a class called "Projects" and because it was a core class in Fine Arts, this included Photography students. I had the great honor of co-teaching with such great artists and educators as Anne Massoni, David Graham, Shawn Theodore and Juliana Foster.
And anything I thought I knew about photography was eradicated during this time! I felt a little out of my depths teaching photo students, but it is one of my fondest memories--looking at their works in Lightroom and considering what it means to make a decent photo.
All of this to say, I have NO CLUE what I am doing as a photographer and I make no real artistic claims here. Its just a "hobby" for me. Here is a curated set of my favorite pics I have taken on my "covid walks" (and other things I have encountered doing goodness knows what). They are things that caught my eye and seemed worthy of making a photo of.
There are two other "photo essays" (i.e. pics that must be seen as a series because they don't really stand alone. Ladies of the Pandemic and Philly Bouquets
Dear Readers: in the interest of posting anything at all I am declaring a stoppage on editing the text of this post. Lets just say, it was kinda getting away from me and the words felt wordy etc. So here it is, just like it was last time I opened the document, for better or worse.
Panel #6 of 7 is done! :)
PART I
I now have a name for the dome: "Super/Natural"*.
*subject to change.
I'm sure you already know that the most disliked word in
English is "Moist". The second most must be "spirituality", amirite?
I know someone who used the word spirituality in her
artist's statement in college and her professor said she would fail her for the
course unless she changed it. I believe she kept it in.Willing to die on that hill—I admire
that!But I understand the professor who
was picturing some new age hellscape replete with the purplest of purple
crystals.
I was raised by two materialist atheists. My dad was a
scientist. Not just any type of science mind you, but a microbiologist.I have heard it said that physicists scan
skew towards the mystical, but not biologists!All that goo really reinforces the material side of reality! But
wait!There’s more….My mother was the
director of a school for severely autistic children—the type that make any
thought of a just and loving god, or even a practical one, near impossible. So,
they abandoned the religions of their upbringings, along with all other
religions as well as any notions of spirituality.Fair enough!
As a teenager I wanted nothing more than to rebel against
them somehow…. They are lucky I didn’t run off with a doomsday cult.
Suffice it to say, having atheism presented as the only reasonable option
for structuring one’s thinking had its downside. Recently, I was participating
in a discussion with friends about matters spiritual.No surprise, most came down on the secular
side. And some were very staunchly materialistic, characterizing spirituality
as superstition or belief in the supernatural (as did my parents). And I always end up wondering if science and
spirituality completely incompatible (cue Einstein quote.) Why does
spirituality necessarily imply an anthropomorphic deity? Can’t one believe in
the divine without Sky Jesus or some such? Am I being obtuse here?
For a long time, I have thought that art always wants to
ally itself to the truth of its times. Back in the day in Europe, that
meant the Christian church. It must be interesting to live in a time when
science, religion and art are all serving the same seamless “truth”.I can barely imagine what that’s like.Is it nice?Limiting?It certainly couldn’t
work now.
Around 1500 CE, along comes a burgeoning humanism and an
increasing trend towards separation of church and state (and a separation of
the individual person from a “source”, I imagine it like a big bang-like
expanding universe, ever traveling away from the center) ...and it all seems to
make room for science. So gradually art became interested in science, or
at least allying itself with science in the name of TRUTH.This is not good news for stained glass,
which has always been “spiritual”.And
that is because… because…….because…because why? Well, I am guessing because
radiant colored light coming into an Official Sacred Space makes believers jiggy
and feels like what we might imagine divine inspiration feels like.Warm! Beautiful! Incandescent! Lucid! Ethereal!
Or something like that. Where’s the good Abbot Suger (“stained glass is
enlightenment embodied”) when you need him?
I think setting up a dichotomy between a scientific truthand a mythologic truth is to miss something important.For one thing, I really, really, REALLY don’t
want to have to pick between the two.But hey: at least in equating spirituality with the supernatural,
materialists acknowledge spirituality is both super and natural!Super-duper!
The problem for me arises when you must pick between
science and mythos for The Truth. Because any sensible person will
choose moon landings and vaccines for the win every time, including me. I very
much believe in the facts of science but is it The Truth?Consciousness being what it is, The
Truth is always going to be a human construct. As such, it’s on par with
subjective reality. (I feel really brave for saying that out loud because I can
already hear my parents screaming at me at how idiotic that is!) And yet but
still, part of me is waiting to find out reality is all in my head. Maybe I
read too much sci-fi as a kid, but as long as reality is mediated by our brains
and senses, there’s room for doubt. After all, how can one study that which is
extraneous to our own minds without employing our mediated, reality
constructing brains to do it?
One of many ginormous problems I had with Trump was the
whole “alternative facts” thing. It forced people to side with science facts or
his lies. But alternative realities are my bread and butter in the studio. I
mean, what in the heck is art if not big honking displays of alternative facts?
Especially art that derives from the imagination, like the flowers and birds in
my dome. I didn’t appreciate their sudden demotion to the irrelevancy
department. In the end I want to believe that The Truth is not knowable,
therefore the best we might manage is a reunion between subjective and
objective…or mind and body. IF. YOU. WILL.
Some of the stated intentions for the dome are underscoring
the intersection of art and science. But maybe…just maybe, part of this
project is to “attempt” a reunion of science and spiritual via art.Not that this is the only recent attempt—in
fact, I think it happens all the time. I think maybe that’s the whole project
of art all the time. But the last time we all agreed on that in Western culture
was around 1499!
In my original proposal I said this:
“Spirituality is not typically the realm of science (and
from my personal experience, it is absolutely taboo in academia in general
unless one is in a Religious Studies program). As such, I am assuming biophilic
spaces are studied from a practical and material point of view. But I think,
without getting too mystical about it, biophilic spaces offer an opportunity to
reconcile a human consciousness with an environmental context. They can
demonstrate that what appears to be a mind/body split, or a mental
classification of interior vs exterior (self vs “not-self”) is a perceptual
illusion and while it may have an important practical heuristic function, it
also ensures a sense of a sense of loneliness and enables eco disasters, etc.
Therefore, I conclude that if reuniting these seemingly separate things is not
the essence of “spirituality” then nothing is. I would say that from a
neurological or psychological perspective, this has some value.”
Fancy proposal language for: If I am gonna build a little
mini-church, it’s going to have to reference spirituality. Or, shall I say,
that aspect of consciousness that connects us to life, reconciles our mind and
body and feels meaningful and inspiring? I may not believe in anything supernatural
or any type of god, but I certainly believe things can be super and natural...sometimes
even simultaneously!
My choice to make a little church comes from the fact that
ever since I became a stained glass artist, the CHURCH THING has loomed large.
Enlightenment indeed—who doesn’t want a smidge of that in their art?Being an official atheist, I think making a
window for a religious space, be it a church, synagogue, mosque, or something
else, would be weird for me. Plus, none of those places have never asked me.
But I can relate to the idea of a space dedicated to sacred contemplation and
felt a real urge, a real big urge, actually, to make one.
One thing that differs about my dome is that stained glass
in churches is that is all about a group experience and the buildings tend to
be really large and therefore the windows are seen from a long distance.My dome will be intimate.Really intimate—maybe a wee bit
claustrophobic, even. My art, my idea of spiritual experience is that its best
one-on-one.
He collected old books—some as old at the 1700’s.I remember being struck by the beauty of
their hand-colored print illustrations.Flash forward to now.For some years
I have been really getting into botanical and various natural history prints.,
perhaps inspired by this early exposure.
I remember reading a Dover (remember them?) reprint of a
Medieval Bestiary.I bought it for the
images—but one day checked out the text.I will include some examples.
A Spicy Example
They
were unintentionally hilarious.For one
thing, it seemed that the descriptions were not based on much in the way of
observable reality. And this really got me—imagine that!! It was stunning to me
to think that they could be understood as somehow a reflection of reality. And
yet, they were. That was a first inkling that one needn’t always prioritize
observable, external reality as real. Surely the imagination is also real.
From a pernicious tendency towards anthropomorphism to an
insistence on arranging them in mise-en-scenes to flat-out-decorative
arrangements, old “science” illustrations manage to distort and manipulate
“reality” in wild and crazy ways.Even
Audubon’s work seems hyper real rather than real-real.Of course, the invention of the photograph
co-opted our understanding of the observable, and now only photos seem real to
us, which is a whole weird thing unto itself.Photos never look even remotely real to me.
Really, these old illustrations could ultimately be seen as
images of the artist’s brain, as self-portraits.Pardon me, but your subjectivity is showing. Obviously,
they lack a certain amount of what you might call scientific objectivity.I found this rather amusing until I remembered
that there was no such thing as “science” as we understand it now back then.
Which got me on a long trip wherein I reveled at the doomed
nature of attempts at “objective truth”.She scienced me with blindness, indeed.
It seemed to me that the more the artist tried to depict
something ocularly objective, the more they only managed to depict their own
conception of it.As it turns out
there’s a whole book on this which I read.I am highly recommending “Objectivity” by Lorraine Daston if this topic
intrigues you like it does me.She is a
far better person at explaining all the paradoxes and twists and turns it takes
to make a stab at objectivity.
As an artist, I refuse to choose between objective and
subjective truth.I think “spiritual
truth” could be a place where they become one.And that is how I am defining the “super/natural”. At least today I am.
All five completed panels so far (there will be 9 altogether). Click to enlarge!!!
Intro
Please refer to my previous post for information on what
inspired the dome and what my aims are here. Nota bene: I balked at saying “my aims”
…I feel like the aims of the dome belong to the dome, not me.But yeah.
Here’s short, silent video of the project.I don’t know how to film things well, so
please forgive the production values. Things I would have put in the soundtrack
if I had been motivated to do one:
1.The Lou Reed song “Vicious”
2.The wooden dome structure is a mock-up.The final dome will be NICER!
3.In the video you will notice there are two
vertical wooden beans flanking the dome—they are my easel and have nothing
whatsoever to do with dome.Ignore them.
4. Ultimately, there will be glass in the dome part of the dome.
Nature isn’t Natural Any More How many times have you heard an artist say they are
inspired by nature?I’ll bet it’s a
lot.Well, I’m not.I am inspired by a lack of nature.I live in the city, and I like it. A lot.
Plus, I have never had a car.That means
I don’t get out into nature hardly ever.Maybe a handful of times per year and I am even including Heinz! I have experienced actual wildness...exactly never.
To say the dome is inspired by nature would be to ignore
that to arrive at nature I have to physically travel.My ideas of nature are 100% cultural constructs.We tend to think of nature as plants,
animals, wilderness, the stuff that we are in the process of destroying…all
true enough.But for the most part we
carry on our lives in entirely human manipulated environments.Even a garden is a human creation and while
it contains elements of “nature”, they have been highly manipulated.
That’s why biophilia as a principle makes me a little
crazy.Its nature alright—but not the
parts with E.coli, cockroaches, flesh eating bacteria and storms that send tree
branches into your property.
Biophilia
is actually a human fantasy about benign nature. If one is putting forth the idea that the desire for biophilic spaces in our office buildings somehow proves humans crave nature, then I would question how natural is it when it has been tamed and sanitized? How natural is it when we, the same people who are engaged elsewhere in deforestation etc, still insist upon domination? It would be a poor idea to suggest biophilia as a strategy to promote green policies.
...Which is why my dome has plenty of ants, beetles, snakes and one rotting opossum. Also, I am hoping the flowers seem to have consciousness.... I don't want my imaginary nature to be claiming to be a representation of anything natural outside my own brain.
Deep Context
Once upon a time I was mining a vein of inspiration that
lasted about 20 plus years.Broadly
speaking I would describe that work as “writhing women with highly decorative backgrounds.”...or something like that.
"Murder and Child" 1993
If you know my work, I probably don’t need to explain that.
During this once upon a time, it was common for people, usually male non-arts
people, to advise me to do something more palatable. Like flowers. Ya
know?So I could sell more?For those people I say, well it turns out
there’s a market for writhing women. So there. Or maybe it was the decorative background,
and they were all able to ignore the writhing woman, front and center.
Creative journeys aren’t static, and I would say the seeds
of my shift in subject matter have been present since “Tiny Eva”, 1993.Or even earlier pieces such as “Cast” from
1986 or “Primavera” from 1985.Those are
the first post-graduation works I made.
"Primavera" 1985
"Cast", 1987 "Tiny Eva", 1993,
What I want to call attention to is the decorative, usually floral,
background which was purely support material for the figure at first but
slowly, over the course of over 25 years assumed more and more prominence until
it took over the entire image and the figure was squeezed out.
Why did this happen?So many reasons!
1.I just plain got bored
of figures.
2.I no longer needed
to create human proxies for myself. They “why” here is very personal. Let’s
just say, I gotten over myself.
3. And this is a far distant third as it really isn’t a
reason for me at all, but I shall mention it: it’s not a good time to do
figures.In fact, it’s almost never a
good time to do figures (unless the king is paying you).In a nutshell, if you make a convincing figure,
you are in the valley of the uncanny and/or stealing souls and if you make a
crappy figure, well, you made a crappy figure.Uh oh on all accounts.As many
times in human history can attest, when it comes to representing human being,
there is NO WAY not to upset someone unless you do nothing but self-portraits
(and then you just look self-indulgent.)
But if I was still inspired by figures I would still make
them and damn the torpedoes.
Viciousness
So why did flowers and birds take over…should I just cop to
losing my edginess?
I am thinking about the song “Vicious” by Lou Reed. Which,
the internet tells me “…is a cautionary tale about the dangers of loving
someone who is deeply flawed.” Hey
wait!Isn’t everybody deeply
flawed?Moving on…
Apparently, I am stuck at line one. “Vicious. You hit me
with a flower. You do it every hour. Oh, baby, you're so vicious.”
How does one imbue that tamest of tame subjects, flowers,
with something edgy?I was always suspicious
of flower painting.It always seemed
such an anodyne.Like the kind of hobby
someone seriously invested in avoiding the truth about their own dark side
might do.I could see the most devious,
cruel and sadistic minds might want to do flower paintings.I learned to be deeply suspicious of them.But I always liked a few.No, not Georgia O’Keeffe.God knows I tried to like them, but I just
can’t. They are just plain stingy.
I do love the flowers of Martin Johnson Heade, Joseph Stella, and Inka Essenhigh.All three make
mystical flowers.Flowers as grand and complex characters, not just props.This is what I am trying to do.
They all manage to make flowers into something to be
reckoned with, not something pleasing and simple.And not just sexy.Sexy flowers are good, but in the end, I need
love.These artists flowers respect me
the next morning. They love me and since I am myself vicious and deeply flawed,
I savor their impact.That’s
where I am trying to go in the dome.
