Minnesota artist’s work will be back in fashion – and sent to the moon – Bemidji Pioneer

DULUTH – “Once Upon a Childhood,” a 2020 oil painting by Duluth artist Kelly Schamberger, has received a San Diego Fashion Week award in an international competition. As a result, the image of a model ship will not only be displayed in New York, but will serve as inspiration for an original fashion outfit and – wait for it – will be sent to the moon.

“I still can’t believe it,” Schamberger said. “People spend their lives trying to be recognized in this competition.” The competition is under the auspices of the New Jersey Art Renewal Center, an organization that Schamberger describes as “the leading authority (on, and) promoter of contemporary realist artists.”

The 16th ARC International Salon Competition includes a complex division of several thousand entries. There are dozens of award categories, with varying prizes and numbers of winners. Schamberger’s piece was one of 10 honored by San Diego Fashion Week, which will commission a designer (the artist doesn’t know who yet) to create an outfit inspired by the painting. The garment 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 that will go into space later this year. As the competition’s website explains: “Art images will be laser etched onto nickel microfiche and/or digitized onto terabyte memory cards and enclosed in a time capsule on the SpaceX-launched Griffin lunar lander, and will settle on the moon for eternity.”

“It’s kind of expensive to get in. I paid $275,” Schamberger said. “Literally the only reason I got in this year was because they said, ‘Oh, by the way, whoever wins an award or an honorable mention is going to go in this time capsule to the moon.’

The artist said it is 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 of painting a wooden model built by her late, beloved uncle William Rager.

Although Schamberger is fascinated by space, she said, she has never painted a spaceship or celestial object. “I paint mostly from life,” she said, “and I don’t have a good way of looking … that far.”

While Schamberger will travel to New York to view the Sotheby’s exhibit, she has yet to receive an invitation to take her art to the moon.

“I would totally volunteer,” she said, “to be the first artist to go up into space to draw or paint a picture of Earth.”

Conveniently, the paint already comes in tubes.