Kristine Schomaker began “Perceive Me” as a personal project, a collection of unique works in disparate mediums, each piece revealing Schomaker herself. Her vision of the exhibition, however, has changed since she began the project in 2018. What began as a personal journey focused on self-esteem and learning to love herself has turned into a “universal statement about acceptance, humanity and truth,” according to the artist, one that has empowered her after seeing herself through others’ eyes. “The exhibition has become a jumping off point to continue to explore notions of identity, love, honesty and courage in my art and life,” she says.

Originally opened at the Ronald Silverman Gallery at CSULA, this version is at Coastline Art Gallery in Newport Beach, having passed through Ventura and Lancaster’s MOAH Cedar en route, with an upcoming show in San Diego. The collaborative project features an abundantly fresh curation, offering a wide range of techniques and intimate revelations about the artist, who posed nude for the 60-some contributing artists. The exhibition is a full-on tribute to the human form, and the indomitable spirit that form contains. This is clearly seen in a lush oil painting of the subject, Private and Public by Nurit Avesar. It is reminiscent of Mary Cassatt, awash in soft light and powerful with quiet purpose. Shelli Silvero’s joyous, large-scale cutout watercolor gives us Schomaker smiling into a cell phone in Kristine, Perceive Me, Selfie. The sensuous yet discreet black-and-white photography of L. Aviva Diamond aches with longing. Serena Potter’s gloriously innocent image shows the subject in a flowered bathing cap by a sunlit swimming pool, reaching for golden orbs of light. Monica Mark’s evocative image of Schomaker reading a book, shows off a vibrant red tattoo to match a vivid red wig. Tony Pinto’s acrylic cut-out panel is a ready-to-leap-off-the-wall dimensional paper doll, standing nearly eight-feet tall and revealing its subject in a determined “superwoman” pose.  

“Perceive Me” installation view, 2022. Courtesy of Coastline Art Gallery.

Jesse Standlea’s diminutive multi-colored plastic sculptures Stretch, Weight, Relaxed, Proud, Twisted, make a loving, contrasting counterpart in motion to the jubilant, fairy winged Schomaker in Debbie Korbel’s Good as Hell, a mixed-media sculpture suspended from the ceiling. That piece interacts beautifully with Lexie Lanxinger’s 42” x 38” charcoal-on-paper Courage, in which the model is partially clad in a feathered cape, astride a heart-shaped shield with a lion’s face. Emily Wiseman’s shrink-wrapped custom rolls of gift wrap—featuring multiple Kristines in or standing in, inflatable floats, symbolically covers and reveals her subject making a lighthearted contrast to Tanya Ragir’s Divine Inner Being, a ceramic sculptural work depicting the subject as both a Thinker and Buddha figure.

The multi-room gallery has open walls that allow visitors to view the exhibition as a whole or shift easily from piece to piece. Beautifully and conversationally curated, Perceive Me is truly an exhibition to see and savor. It is a genuinely brave and graceful show, notable not only for its exceptionally fine images, but for its originator’s willingness to share—and bare—her soul.