"My work reflects society's obsession with beauty in advertising; images that bombard us daily. I appropriate those images and reuse the advertising, too. My paper mosaics are a purposeful intermix of advertising messages - junk mail, postcards, etc. that arrive through my mailbox. I hand cut, sort and manipulate thousands of pieces; images and text - to assemble a mosaic portrait. I create a new image of beauty - an eclectic and tactile portrait redrawn and reworked in my imagination, utilizing materials that would otherwise go to waste."
- Sandhi Schimmel Gold
Inspiration:
- In Venice, I saw a mosaic - stained glass portrait made of tiny fragments. It was too heavy to carry by train, so I decided to make one "just like it" when I got home. After trial & error, lack of color selection and cut fingers, I decided to use advertising ephemera instead of glass or tile. I glue the pa
 per directly on to my paintings.
- Sure, I am inspired by ancient and Byzantine mosaics, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Antoni Gaudi... it's both the assemblage and the color in the materials that moves me. I am process driven as well as image-centric....Figurative work inspires me – I focus on the female. My vision is to create beautiful yet thought-provoking images of beauty; in vibrant color. I paint with paper.
- Deeper Meanings: Where can beauty be found in a culture of conspicuous consumption? I believe we are an aggregate of tiny bits: who we are and where we've been - or who we want or pretend to be. Each piece expresses a mood – a calculated effect - high drama, serenity, sexuality or humor.
The Essentials:
- Manuel Dexterity: Absolutely no technology, programs or dies are used to create my art. No computers, no photo-shop. Everything is handwork: from initial drawings: hand-painted, paper that is hand-cut a minimum of 8 times, hand-applied, hand-embellished, and hand-finished. Tens of thousands of decisions are made to create one piece. Each portrait takes at least 80 - 240 hours.
- Unique: developed over a number of years; combining my love for color, portraiture, contemporary art and mosaic.
- Green: I create without waste. I upcycle junk mail, calendars, post cards, photos, old greeting cards, packaging, tags, etc... it's all paper waste I collect. I use only water-based, acid-free, non-toxic materials to create my work. It is completely eco-friendly. I reuse and repurpose old canvas, frames, etc. whenever possible.
Papier Collés
- (French: pasted paper) is a painting technique and type of collage recognized by Art Historians since 1912. The term defines the difference between a collage made of several kinds of materials, and a collage made of only paper glued onto a painting.
- Sandhi’s Papier collé mosaics feature hand-cut and hand-applied pieces of assorted paper: greeting cards, advertising ephemera, calendars, packaging and other decorative papers onto an original painting in much the same way as a collage, except the shape of the pasted pieces are objects themselves - individual mosaic tiles. Each “tile” featuring unique typography, texture or imagery of their own. Sandhi may embellish work with tissue, gels, paint, ink or other materials.
- In this way, Sandhi builds on a foundation created by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Henri Matisse. This is a technique as old as time and has become a genuine and undeniable art form in the last century.
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