DULUTH — The 2020 oil painting “Once Upon a Childhood” by Duluth artist Kelly Schamberger has won a Fashion Week San Diego Award in international competition. As a result, the image of the model ship will not only be displayed in New York, but will serve as inspiration for an original couture outfit and – wait for it – sent to the moon.
Contributed / Mitch Rossow Fine Art Photography
“I still can’t believe it,” said Schamberger, reached by phone Tuesday. “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 foremost authority (and) promoter of contemporary realist artists.”
The 16th year of the international ARC Salon Competition brings a comprehensive selection from several thousand entries. There are dozens of award categories with different prizes and numbers of winners. Schamberger’s piece was one of 10 awarded by Fashion Week San Diego, which will commission a designer (the artist doesn’t know who yet) to create an outfit inspired by the painting. The clothes will be modeled alongside the artwork during an exhibition at Sotheby’s in New York in July.
Schamberger’s painting will also be one of 221 winning pieces represented in a set of time capsules that will be launched into space later this year. As the contest website explains, “The artwork will be laser-etched onto nickel microfiche and/or digitized onto terabyte memory cards and enclosed in a time capsule on the Griffin Lunar Lander, launched by SpaceX and permanently stationed on the Moon.”
“It’s a little expensive to get in. I paid $275,” Schamberger said. “Literally the only reason I entered this year was because they said, ‘By the way, whoever wins an award or an honorable mention is going to fly to the moon in this time capsule.’
An artist whose selections can be seen at the FrameWorks gallery in St. Paul from Saturday to March 4, she said it was a coincidence that her port city would be depicted on the moon with a nautical image. She’s just “really proud of the piece,” Schamberger said of the painting of the wooden model built by her late, beloved uncle, William Rager.
Although Schamberger is fascinated by space, she said, she has never actually painted a spaceship or celestial object. “First of all, I’m painting from life,” she said, “and I don’t really have a good way of seeing it… that far.”
While Schamberger will travel to New York to see the Sotheby’s exhibit, she has not yet received an invitation to watch her art on the moon.
“Quite willingly,” she said, “I will be the first artist to be launched into space to draw or paint a picture of Earth.”
The color comes conveniently in tubes.