Miriam Schaer
Xerox transfer with Hand embroidery on doll dress. Text from The Storks, Hans Christian Anderson. (entire quote: Let them scream as much as they like. You will fly up into the clouds.) From the series The Poisoner’s Kiss. 14 x 14 x 12 in. $900.
Xerox transfer with Hand embroidery on doll dress. Text from Little Ida’s Flowers, Hans Christian Anderson. From the series The Poisoner’s Kiss (entire quote: Bury us out in the garden, where the canary lies; then we shall wake up again in summer, and be far more beautiful.) $900.
Hands of Josephus I is an altered book, created from a broken down copy of Flavius Josepus ‘Twenty books of The Jewish Antiquities, The Life of Josephus and the The Jewish Wars’. Each page, cut in the shape of hands is sewn on multiple beaded cords, then attached to wire hand forms, which are encrusted with beads. Josephus, a 1st century Jewish historian and apologist who survived and recorded the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. His works give an important insight into first-century Judaism, while raising questions about who owns history. The hand of the victor it seems, always controls the every version of truth. This is the first book, of five.
Hands of Josephus: Part 1, 2006
Altered text from Josephus: History of the Jews, beads, wire hand forms
Unique book in series of five. 10.5 x 15 x 4 inches. $2000.
When Roses Cease to Bloom celebrates the passing of the flowers, of life from spring to fall, and then from activity to idleness. Like the passing of an allergic reaction, the relief and also a bit of despair.
Girdle, acrylic, silk, found objects, digitally printing, jingle bells. Inset tunnel book 3’’ in diameter. Text by Emily Dickinson, Poem number 39, From part Three: Love. 16 x 19 x 13 inches, Unique. $1400.
Addiction’s Kiss plays with the premise that plagues many-they want and fear, seek and repel love which affect many with an illness that can be come epidemic. Small golden hands grasping out to connect, and small golden pins are waiting to pierce-to deny access to the vulnerability that is essential for truest love. The text, from Ovid within deals with the abundance and the pain of love (As many as the shells that are on the shore, so many are the pains of love; the darts that wound are steeped in much poison. Ovid)
Girdle, acrylic silk, plastic doll arms, dressmaker pins, found objects. Text from Ovid. Unique. 21, x 11 x 9 inches. $1400.
Hostess apron. Sizes Vary. Color Xerox, transfer, acrylic medium, hand embroidered text from Sun Tsu’s The Art of War. 24 x 44 in. $900.
Color Xerox, transfer, acrylic medium, hand embroidered text from Sun Tsu’s The Art of War. 22 x 37 in. $900.
Digitally printed book featuring the entire Rules of Engagement series by Miriam Schaer. 7 x 9 in. $40.
Statement
As an artist engaged with the book format, I work with a variety of non-traditional materials: fabric, clothing, found objects. I transfer, draw and stitch my texts. Using the language of clothing is the startin point for the books and objects I create.
Rules of Engagement, is a series of twenty hostess aprons. Each apron has transferred images idealized women, and is hand embroidered with quotes from Sun Tsu’s The Art of War, which I stumbled upon in an airport book store some years ago-aimed at business travelers. I thought, why not place Sun Tsu, and his strategies in a more domestic context.
Recently I have taken the entire series and put them together in a digitally printed book.
The Posioner’s Kiss was an installation, comprised of floating doll dresses, hanging in space, above a blanket of fallen leaves to create a forest of lost childhood. Each dress has quotes from classic fairy tales embroidered around its hem, and is printed with iconic images that reflect each quote. The quotes reflect the darker side of the tales, the anxiety of childhood and the fear of the unknown which color the unromaticized side of childhood. The background murals are made of the eyes of street children, who are the witnesses, unable to speak
Biography
Miriam Schaer is a multimedia book artist. She uses garments-girdles, bustiers, brassieres, aprons, children’s’ clothes-as her means of containment. Inside these stiffened, shaped, embellished enclosures, she conceals books and other objects that document her explorations of feminine, social, and spiritual issues. Since 1993, she has exhibited steadily and extensively in solo and group exhibitions, and her work has been mentioned in a long list of articles and reviews.
She is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship, is included in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for the Feminist Art Base at the Brooklyn Museum. Ms. Schaer’s work has been represented in the Cheongju International Craft Biennale, in South Korea, and was an artist in residence for the Imagining the Book Biennale at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, in Alexandria, Egypt. She currently is a Lecturer in the Interdisciplinary MFA Program in Book and Paper at Columbia College in Chicago.
