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DULUTH — "Once Upon a Childhood," a 2020 oil painting by Duluth artist Kelly Schamberger, has received a Fashion Week San Diego Award in an international competition. As a result, the image of a model ship will not only be displayed in New York, it will serve as inspiration for an original couture outfit and — wait for it — sent to the moon.
"I still can't believe it," said Schamberger, reached by phone Tuesday. "People spend their life trying to get recognized in this competition." The competition is under the auspices of New Jersey's Art Renewal Center, an organization Schamberger describes as "the foremost authority (on, and) promoter of contemporary realist artists."
The 16th International ARC Salon Competition entails a complex culling from several thousand submissions. There are dozens of award categories, with varying prizes and numbers of winners. Schamberger's piece was one of 10 honored by Fashion Week San Diego, which will commission a designer (the artist doesn't yet know who) to create an outfit inspired by the painting. The outfit will be modeled alongside the artwork during a July exhibition at Sotheby's in New York City.
Schamberger's painting will also be one of 221 winning pieces represented in a set of time capsules heading to space later this year. As the competition website explains: "Art images will be laser-etched on nickel microfiche and/or digitized on terabyte memory cards and enclosed in a time capsule on the Griffin lunar lander, launched by SpaceX, and placed on the Moon in perpetuity."
"It's kind of expensive to enter. I paid $275," said Schamberger. "Literally the only reason I entered this year was because they were like, 'Oh, by the way, anyone who wins an award or an honorable mention is going to go in this time capsule to the moon.'"
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The artist, a selection of whose work can be seen at FrameWorks Gallery in St. Paul from Saturday through March 4, said it's a coincidence that her seaport city will be represented on the moon with a nautical image. She's just "really proud of that piece," Schamberger said about the painting of a wooden model built by her late, beloved uncle William Rager.
Though Schamberger is fascinated by space, she said, she's never actually painted a spacecraft or celestial object. "I primarily paint from life," she said, "and I don't really have a good way of seeing ... so far off."
While Schamberger will travel to New York to see the Sotheby's exhibit, she hasn't yet received an invitation to follow her art to the moon.
"I will totally volunteer," she said, "to be the first artist that gets shot up into space to draw or paint a picture of the Earth."
Conveniently, paint already comes in tubes.
