Artist Beth Schwartz is many things: a voracious reader, a retired pathologist, an art history enthusiast, and a second-wave feminist. In her studio, down in the basement of her Baltimore townhouse, all of these different identities come together in here mixed media artwork.
Schwartz’s works combine media like beads, vintage magazine clippings, painted dictionary pages, and photoshopped prints of classic artworks. She also hasn’t been one to shy away from unconventional materials.
“The first piece I ever had in a show was for something called the bra show,” Schwartz said. “I went to Target, I got like a triple D bra and I encased it in papier-mâché and wired up the the straps with lace and everything.”
Her pieces often contain humor, like a Christmas ornament that shows Raphael’s cherubs photoshopped with cow’s heads and the words “Holy Cow.”
Her work can also be more serious, incorporating her interest in feminism and gender politics. She created a series of #MeToo Barbies made of Barbie dolls in boxes with disembodied hands all over their bodies.
Schwartz is working on big ideas all the time and expressing them visually has always come naturally to her. She said even her career as pathologist was very visual.
“I get a bigger jolt out of doing something visually,” Schwartz said. “I was always the person with the sketchbook.”
Schwartz’s sketchbook followed her through getting her bachelor’s degree in English, traveling through Europe, medical school, marriage and parenthood. For a time, after her divorce, raising her children and working as a doctor didn’t allow much time for art.
But when her children were old enough to spend every other weekend with their father, she found time to express herself artistically once again. At first, she started with polymer clay but didn’t enjoy the precision that was required to make jewelry.
“I was driving myself crazy, trying to be perfect,” Schwartz said. “So I started putting the polymer clay into sort of frames instead of trying to have it perfectly balanced and perfectly polished and perfectly sanded … and once I started painting and incorporating the polymer clay, I got really excited and I had all these ideas.”
Schwartz’s art is on view in galleries around Maryland and Virginia. She donates 15% of her sales to the nonprofit Healthcare for the Homeless.
