Perceive Me Returns to Venice Beach - Feb 27-March 1
- Kristine Schomaker
- Jan 17
- 3 min read
Hi everyone,
Perceive Me is coming back to Venice Beach for Startup Art Fair, February 27 - March 1. Room 203 at The Kinney Hotel.
This project started 10 years ago with a simple question: How do you really see me?
Over 100 artists have now made portraits of me. Paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings - each one completely different. Each artist sees something unique. Nobody agrees on what my body looks like, what it means, how it should be represented.
That's the whole point.
We've been taught there's one right way to look, one acceptable body type, one standard of beauty. Perceive Me proves that's completely false. When you put 100+ interpretations of the same body in one room, you can't claim there's only one way to see.
What's happening at Startup Art Fair:
The main exhibition room #203 features mostly new Perceive Me work alongside some of the first collaborations from when the project began. You'll see how different artists working in different mediums and styles have interpreted my body across this decade. The density of the installation mirrors how we're constantly bombarded with beauty messages, but instead of selling you something, it's celebrating the multiplicity of perception itself.
Next door, we're running Community Nude Portrait Sessions all weekend. This evolved from Perceive Me - instead of just my body, we're opening this transformative experience to anyone willing to be seen.
People sign up onsite for 20-minute sessions. They pose nude while multiple professional artists draw them simultaneously. Private space. Safe. Respectful. No cameras, no audience. Just the generous attention of artists who see bodies without judgment.
Liberty Worth posed at our test run and wrote about speaking to her 13-year-old self who thought she was "disgusting" and "ugly" - about unwinding decades of self-hate while standing on that podium. She watched the artists' heads move up to perceive, down to draw. Up to perceive, down to record.
She wrote: "Rather than absorbing the judgment - those of us who stepped onto that podium opened ourselves up to love instead."
This is what infrastructure for body liberation actually looks like. Not workshops about self-love. Not affirmations. Actual experiences where people's bodies are treated as worthy of artistic study and celebration, where vulnerability becomes powerful, where being seen without shame becomes possible.
Models can purchase their drawings for $30 each. Many buy the angles they thought would be unflattering because the artist rendered them with such tenderness. They realize the gap between how harshly they see themselves and how others actually perceive them.
Event Details:
Startup Art Fair The Kinney Venice Beach 737 Washington Blvd, Venice, CA 90292 Room 203
Hours: Friday, February 27: VIP Early Access 5-7pm | All Access 7-10pm Saturday, February 28: 12pm - 9pm Sunday, March 1: 12pm - 7pm
Get Tickets: www.startup-art.com/los-angeles
Portrait sessions are free and first-come, first-served. Sign up when you arrive. All bodies welcome. All experience levels welcome. You don't need to be a model. You just need to be willing to be seen.
Come see what 100+ artists have made from perceiving me. Walk through a room full of different ways of seeing the same body. And if you're brave enough, sign up to experience being seen yourself.
Questions? Email perceivemeart@gmail.com
See you in Venice Beach,
Kristine
P.S. - If you've been following this project for years, this is the the most interesting presentation yet. Three rooms total at the fair (Perceive Me exhibition, nude portrait sessions, plus Call and Response collaborative artist books). A decade of work showing how collaboration and body liberation can transform how we see ourselves and each other.
So excited! Honored..❤️
This project beautifully challenges narrow beauty standards by showing how diverse perceptions can truly empower body positivity. heartopia bugs