We recently connected with Lisa Schonberg and have shared our conversation below.
Lisa, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
As an artist, it feels like I just have to be making art, maybe it’s in my DNA. It’s hard to describe and may sound cliché but it’s true for me. It’s something I’ve done all my life and why stop. Making art for me is about personal fulfillment and a passion for the field of fine art printmaking. I go about my life reflecting on this feeling and taking this on as my own personal challenge, finding inspirational experiences and searching for ideas. I’ve built my art career on knowledge of the printmaking field, an area of the art world that can be misunderstood and which takes a lot of practice, trial and error. Maybe that’s why I became a teacher so as to make the field more understandable and exciting. I could study this field and all the new technological advancements for the rest of my life and still never run out of things to learn. Perpetual learning, hard work and persistence are important to me. Resilience comes from experimenting with materials, writing in a journal, sketching, reading, walking in the woods or on a beach, travelling and building a library of photographs of our natural world. For me, all of these things are catalysts toward developing my artwork. While doing these things I mentally record how natural phenomena effects my psyche and how I can create art to positively reflect this and influence others. In printmaking there is a lot repetition, experimentation and subsequent blunders that no one ever sees. This is expected. I never want my practice to become methodical or boring just to get a perfect result. I strive to continually challenge myself with new avenues to take and for me, a little imperfection is OK.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’ve been making art since I was a kid and our natural environment has always been my muse. As far back as I can remember, I’ve always made things and studied art. I have a BFA in Art Education/Painting and Drawing and an MFA in Printmaking. I am retired from teaching for 40 years, but will never retire from an artist’s life. While teaching I kept making prints but only had time to do so during breaks in the academic schedule. Today I am focused on stepping up my art practice since discontinuing teaching and living the fullest life I can with family, friends and travel. I enjoy printmaking especially “monoprinting”, which is the making of one-of-kind images using various printmaking processes and techniques. I prefer not to work editioning, that is, making sets of identical prints. Instead, I work with trying to produce a series of related images based on a concept or visual narrative. These concepts/narratives use images from nature which I try to expressively align with human behaviors and feelings. I use a variety of processes separately or in combination with one another such as relief, intaglio, screen printing and cyanotypes to develop and layer the works.
So far, my career has picked up in the last 10 years or so. I am busier than I’ve ever been with gallery shows, juried exhibitions and sales to individual collectors, hospitals and corporations. Sometimes I still use my teaching skills giving workshops and one-on-one teaching sessions in the studio where I work at Zygote Press in downtown Cleveland. I am grateful for the community I live in and for the collaborative studio I get to work in. I get a lot of support from many entities.
Artistically, my purpose is to make work that is nature related, can contribute to a viewer’s well-being and create a sense of healing. I also want people to feel how reverence for our natural world can help us keep it healthy. There is something magical about how nature can transport us emotionally to somewhere else and nurture us along the way. I strive to make art that can also do that.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. As a teacher, my advice is to really care about what you are doing, just don’t go through the motions. If you have a passion for a certain field of study, go for it! Research and delve into your field. And because teaching, I feel, is one of the hardest professions in the world, if you do it with compassion, I salute you! The rewards are many even if the money isn’t great. If you appreciate this, you will be so influential in the lives of those you teach. Mentor them as best you can…the world needs you! Just one sincere mentor in a child’s life can make all the difference. 2. As an artist, work hard at developing a passion for what you do. Making art with integrity is not always easy; art is hard work. Unless you get scooped up by the mega art world and you have some kind of agent that helps promote you, it’s hard to make a living with your art. Balancing another job with the making of art work is the key and can help pay the bills. It’s messy, so go ahead and experiment. Allow yourself to make mistakes, build on the AHA! moments that can happen and keep at it. Sometimes getting out of your head and just “doing” is important; stay positive. There’s nothing worse than just thinking about doing something and then never doing it!
3. Also, my advice is to not focus on being famous, make being the best artist you can be your goal. Make art that’s meaningful. Get out and meet people, network at events, volunteer and most of all have a good attitude. Treating people with kindness goes a long way. It will make you feel good no matter what profession you are in and it can help free your mind up for the creative things you want to do.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
As I get older, the number one challenge for me is staying healthy, both physically and mentally strong. Printmaking is a highly physical art. Lots of set up time, lots of cleanup and lots of standing and working a press or squeegee etc. Making art for me is my second career, no time for slacking! I tell people that I’m going to be making art until my last day on this earth and I hope this is true. In our present fast paced culture, overcoming the negativity about aging is a real challenge. The stigma or stereotypical perception of the older adult not being productive is the hardest thing to fight against. I also think that we easily forget what the older adult has to offer. Think of all the things they’ve been through and how much wisdom they have to offer. Purpose in life has no age barriers and there’s nothing like the present to learn and experience as much as you can. Just “showing up” is so important. In addition to having a good work ethic, getting out there interacting with others and discussing ideas is paramount to success.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.lisamschonberg.com
- Instagram: Lisa.schonberg
- Linked-In: www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-
schonberg-75a28a79
Image Credits
Michaelle Marschall Yana Mikho-Misho
