Vintage Candy Shop Aesthetic Meets Radical Body Liberation Art

Artist Kristine Schomaker’s immersive installation reimagines nostalgia, destruction, and self-acceptance as acts of creative transformation

LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, October 20, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- This fall, artist Kristine Schomaker transforms her working studio at the Brewery Arts Complex into Kristine’s Sweet Shoppe of Liberation, a vintage-inspired art installation that merges pop aesthetics with radical self-inquiry. The installation will be open to the public during the Brewery Artwalk, 660 S Avenue 21, #3, on October 25–26, 2025, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Each Spring and Fall, more than 100 resident artists open their studios to the public, offering visitors an intimate look at the creative process and an opportunity to purchase artwork directly from the artists. Admission and parking are free.

Behind the pink-striped facade and nostalgic candy shop décor of this installation lies something far more subversive: fifty-two years of the artist’s own life—carefully archived, then cut, shredded, and transformed into collectible art objects. Each candy-like package is both a reliquary and a rebellion, offering visitors a piece of the artist’s history reframed as liberation.

“This is where Fluxus meets confectionery,” Schomaker explains. “Where controlled destruction becomes precious art, and where your purchase makes you a collaborator in radical liberation.” The Sweet Shoppe’s “liberation blends” are housed in acrylic vitrines and filled with meticulously organized materials—handwritten letters, childhood report cards, diary fragments, shredded CD inserts, painted Yogurtland spoons from an eating disorder recovery journey, and even strands of cut-up wigs once worn in self-portrait performances. Each cube captures an intimate record of letting go, embodying Schomaker’s long-standing inquiry into body image, identity, and transformation.

The candy-colored display is more than aesthetic play. It’s a conceptual framework for understanding the bittersweet process of deconstruction—the breaking apart of personal and cultural ideals that no longer serve us. Through humor, beauty, and the familiar visual language of nostalgia, the artist invites viewers to confront the deeper truths hidden behind the shiny wrappers of consumer culture and self-perception.
For Schomaker, this project continues a decade-long practice of cutting, dismantling, and reassembling her own work as a process of renewal. The artist has shredded thousands of photographs, sliced through decades of paintings, buzzed off her hair and sealed it in jars, and dismantled mannequin self-portraits that once represented her virtual avatar.

These acts of destruction—once compulsive, now ritualized—form the backbone of her methodology: an evolving, autobiographical performance of liberation. Kristine’s Sweet Shoppe of Liberation represents the latest transformation of this practice, converting the remains of those gestures into accessible, touchable, even giftable artworks. The installation also features immersive Pattern on Wall (POW) works—floor-to-ceiling installations that reimagine the candy shop interior through vibrant repetition, abstraction, and pattern play. These walls envelop visitors in a kind of visual sugar rush that dissolves boundaries between art, environment, and emotion.

More than an exhibition, Kristine’s Sweet Shoppe of Liberation is a participatory experiment in empathy and empowerment. Visitors are invited to browse, handle, and purchase the “sweets” — transforming from passive observers into active collaborators. Each purchase symbolically participates in dismantling stigma and reclaiming agency over the narratives of beauty, worth, and belonging. By turning destruction into something beautiful, Schomaker redefines the act of self-reclamation. The project situates itself within feminist performance traditions, social practice, and conceptual art movements such as Fluxus—yet its tone remains playful, generous, and deeply human.

About the Artist
Kristine Schomaker is a Los Angeles–based multidisciplinary artist, curator, advocate, and community organizer whose work explores identity, body liberation, and transformation. She is the founder of Shoebox Arts (est. 2014), an organization dedicated to helping artists gain visibility and navigate the professional art world through education, mentorship, and collaboration.
In recognition of her visionary leadership, Schomaker was named a 2025 CALI Catalyst Award recipient by the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI). The CALI Catalyst program honors individuals whose frontline work challenges inequities in the arts and fosters systemic change toward greater inclusion and access. Schomaker’s artistic and community-driven projects embody these values—creating spaces where vulnerability becomes strength, and where artists and audiences alike can participate in the process of healing through art.

Her work has been exhibited widely across Southern California and nationally, including projects at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History, Museum of Sonoma County, and Los Angeles Art Association’s Gallery 825. As both artist and organizer, she continues to advocate for the visibility and empowerment of artists of all backgrounds, particularly those marginalized by traditional art structures.
About the Brewery Artwalk

The Brewery Artwalk is a vibrant twice-yearly open studio weekend held at the historic Brewery Arts Complex in downtown Los Angeles—recognized as the world’s largest live/work art community. Originally the site of the Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery, the complex began its transformation in 1982 after the passage of the city’s Artist-In-Residence ordinance, which allowed artists to legally live and work in industrial spaces. The Artwalk has become a Los Angeles tradition—celebrating the city’s rich and diverse artistic culture while connecting audiences directly with the makers who shape it.

Kristine Schomaker
Shoebox Arts
kristineschomaker@gmail.com
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