Lola Schnabel: meet an artist immersed in art, not the art scene

A one-woman multimedia juggling act, artist Lola Schnabel is equally adept at painting, drawing, photography, film, fashion and almost anything she puts her fingers to. In the last year alone, the 21-year-old New York native has been working on hand-etched 16 mm short-film work, a collection of T-shirts for the clothing line Alabama, a children's book about a manatee, and a recently published collection of Polaroids, photos and drawings called Remember Me (www.percevalpress.com), all of which satisfy a desire not to limit herself to old-fashioned notions that artists belong in galleries.

"Your first show should be as great as any in your life," says the artist, who has yet to join with a gallery. "Luckily, I don't have to show everything I make and I can wait, let things evolve. There's such a pressure to show everything you've got--you have to get in a groove first."

Recently, it has been the uncompromising Schnabel's large-scale small thinking that has garnered the artist increasing interest. Working within physically small media (such as 16 mm film and Polaroid photography), she has been able to create her own world--scratching at surfaces, drawing over details and stripping others away, then enlarging the results or projecting them at a much greater size...the effect being that the intimacy she has created is bared to startling effect.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning