You Don't Have to Figure Out the Art World Alone

You belong in the art world. Finding your place in it just takes the right community, the right resources, and someone who has been in the trenches long enough to know how it actually works.

There are many art worlds. And somewhere in that landscape is one that fits your work, your life, and your values. Shoebox helps you find it.

Artists are stronger together. That's not a slogan. That's what we've watched happen for over a decade at the Brewery in Los Angeles. Community is the strategy. Support begets support. And when artists stop navigating alone, everything changes.

I'm Kristine Schomaker, artist, curator, writer and community builder. For over a decade I've been building something different. A commons. A circle. A place where artists stop being alone with it.

Weekly programming. 53 professional development guides. A community that invests in each other and watches it come back around. Monday Masterclass, Tuesday Community Conversations, critique groups, speaker series, studio visit exchange. All of it built on one idea: community over competition.

There are many art worlds. We'll help you find yours.

Kristine Schomaker leading an Artist Meet-up at ArtbarLA

How We Support Artists

Start Free
Try Our Community Programs

Community Conversations - Every Tuesday, 11am PST.
Open forum for real talk about submissions, social media, pricing,
and art world challenges
Studio Visit Exchange - Get matched
with artists or art professionals for meaningful studio exchanges
Call and Response - Global artistic collaborations connecting artists
across 6 continents

Ready to try?

Explore our Free Programs

Join Our Community

Artist Support Membership

Weekly artist development sessions, monthly critiques and speakers with industry professionals, curated opportunities, and a private community of committed artists.

What you get: Monday Masterclass, co-working, accountability, book club, tutorials, office hours, critique groups, guest speaker series, exhibition opportunities, 53 professional development guides, 200+ video library, and direct access to Kristine as your mentor.

Coming up: June: Find Your Place July: Pricing Your Work August: Professional Studio Visits September: How To Get Invited To Shows

Ready to get Started?

Join our Membership

Kristine Schomaker and other artists on a couch sitting around an art studio

Why Artists Choose Shoebox Arts

"From the moment I partnered with Kristine, I had the feeling that she truly cared about me and helping me grow my art career. Through media outreach, press releases, and curated events, my artwork reached audiences far beyond what I could have achieved independently." — Erika Lizée, Artist

Our impact:
500+ artists supported • 20+ collaboration rounds • 11+ years building community

Kristine Schomaker and friends standing in front of artworks

Ready to Get Started?

New to Shoebox? Start with our free Community Conversations every Tuesday

at 11am PST

Ready for community? Join our

Artist Support Membership for comprehensive development

Need immediate help? Book a

one-on-one consultation

Questions? Email Kristine at shoeboxartsla@gmail.com

Shoebox strives to provide artists with equitable access to opportunities

regardless of race, ethnicity, disability,

religion, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, citizenship or financial status.

Which art world are you actually trying to be in?

Not the one you think you should be in. Not the one your MFA program pointed you toward. The one that actually fits your work, your life, your values.

That's the question we're starting with in Find Your Place, our new Monday Masterclass series running every Monday in June at 11am PST.

Over four weeks we'll work through which art world you're actually trying to be in, who your real audience is, what success looks like for you specifically, and how to build a concrete roadmap for the next 6 to 12 months.

Worksheets. Checklists. Group discussion. And by the end you'll have an actual plan. Not just more things to think about.

Included in your Shoebox membership.

Not a member yet? www.shoeboxarts.com/membership

#mondaymasterclass #artistdevelopment #shoeboxarts #artcareer #findyourplace

I’m @carolineallenartist taking over insta for Shoebox for a few days. Diversity is exciting! #diversity

@carolineallenartist here — I’m part of Shoebox’s summer instagram takeover.

As a book coach, I’m profoundly interested in the creative journey, the story behind the story. @zebswish #equineart #environmentalart #ecofiction #yanovels #creativeprocess

@carolineallenartist here on Day 3 of the Instagram Takeover for Shoebox. I’m a published novelist and exhibiting artist and integrate the two disciplines.

Just finished the rough draft of my sixth novel “Red” about a lost girl and a wild Arabian horse, both desperately trying to get their feral whimsy back.

And while writing the novel, I’m painting a series of horses called Mystic Equine.

And meanwhile I’m working with horses at a local horse rescue.

Full immersion.

I don’t fit the standard categories in the art world, or in the literary world. And after struggling with this for years, I accept and love that I’m different.

It goes beyond being both a novelist and visual artist. My artistic and literary styles between series shift dramatically. No matter how much the literary world and art world want some kind of consistent style, I must express unfiltered or I cannot express at all.

#yanovel #equineart #creativeprocess #oregonartist It

This is @carolineallenartist in Oregon taking over instagram for Shoebox for the next few days. Today I’m posting the Dissolve Series: Finding Beauty in Dis-integration. (Sold) Solvents and ink on paper. #ecoart #oregonartist

Day 2 of the @shoeboxarts.la instagram takeover. I’m your host for the next few days @carolineallenartist. I’m a coach and today is a busy coaching day, so I’ll share images of an ongoing project called Dissolve: Finding the beauty in dis-integration.

I’m a “mystic artist” — think William Blake — so art happens after I come out of a dream or go into a vision. For this project I used solvent to morph existing images and then ink.

10x14” on cradled board. Sold.

#williamblake #oregonartist

Waiting Rooms is up at Shoebox Projects through June 20 by appointment.

I've been working with Monica Marks for a while now and I can tell you this show has been a long time coming. She's been photographing hospital rooms, hallways, hands, the small objects that mark the passage of anxious time since 2016 when her daughter almost died. Seven days in the ICU. That experience changed the way she understands time, fear, and the spaces we are forced to occupy when someone we love is in danger.

Twenty three photographs. Twenty recorded stories sent in by people who trusted her with their own experiences of waiting and wondering.

You'll walk in and it will feel like a waiting room. Chairs, headphones, magazines. And on the walls, photographs that are windows into real moments.

This is work that asks something of you. A conversation worth having.

Book your appointment at shoeboxartsla@gmail.com

Shoebox Projects at the Brewery
660 South Avenue 21 #3, Los Angeles
Through June 20 by appointment only

#shoeboxprojects #losangelesart #contemporaryart #waitingrooms #monicamarks

Im @carolineallenartist and part of the summer instagram takeover @shoeboxarts.la! #mothernaturesbeauty #weallneedabreak #earthing

I’m @carolineallenartist and I’m part of Kristine’s instagram takeover crew for Shoebox. I’ll be posting for the next few days. I’m posting today about a 2025 show called “Bruised Goddess: Because the energy of change is not complacent.” #oregonartist #womenempowerment

Hi! This is day 3 for me taking over this instagram ( ok I did miss yesterday-got waylaid) Here is "Anonymous: I should have known) a mixed media collage on wood panel that is in the Resurrection:Beckoning the Crone exhibit opening this Saturday June 6 at 5-10 Pm at OCCCA, 117 North Sycamore Street, Santa Ana, 92701. composed of vintage materials such as: cabinet cards, leather album cover, handwritten letters circa 1860-80's, jade handle, bone man Jong tiles, discolored ribbon, scrap metal, playing cards circa 1930's, beaded ribbon, newspaper fragment on wood panel 16 x 16 x 2.75 inches 2021

I’m @carolineallenartist part of the insta takeover this month! I channel paintings (think William Blake). Purged a series of Bruised Goddesses just on the cusp of the release of the Epstein files. (The No Evils went on to show at Portland’s @fordgallery.pdx)

#mystic #williamblakeart #oregonartist #epsteinfiles

Hi it’s @carolineallenartist (aka Carrie) and I’m part of @shoeboxarts.la’s insta takeover. I’ll be posting for the next few days.

Hello from my yurt studio in rural Oregon.

I was an international journalist (now artist/novelist) living in some of the biggest cities like London and Tokyo and Boston — and I chose to move to be in nature and focus on my art about a decade ago.

Staying connected to the outside world through wonderful artists like Kristine at Shoebox.

💜💚🩵❤️💙 #shoeboxarts #artcommunity #yurt #oregonartist

All of June, this feed belongs to our artists.

Starting June 1st, 11 incredible artists started taking over @shoeboxarts.la. Their work, their voices, their process. Just art.

Nancy Richfield: June 1-3
Carrie: June 4-8
Dellis Frank: June 9-11
Resha: June 12-14
Kimberlee: June 15-16
Zoe Ella: June 17-18
Isabelle: June 19-21
Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja: June 22-24
Giliane: June 25-26
Valerie: June 27-28
April: June 29 - July 2

Follow along. This is what community looks like.

#artisttakeover #shoeboxarts #artistcommunity #losangelesart #communityovercompetition

Artwork by @sfroschauerart

Day 2 of my pre-planned instagram take over of Kristine Schomaker's instagram. I'll be here for today and tomorrow with a few sneak peeks of my work for the upcoming exhibit. "Resurrection: Beckoning the Crone," at OCCCA, 117 N. Sycamore St, Santa Ana, CA 92701 which opens this Saturday from 5-10pm. This is "Memory Palace" about to be hung. @nancykayturner

Hello! Nancy Kay Turner here @nancykayturner doing a pre-planned instagram "takeover" for a few days as an experiment from the ever creative Kristine Schomaker. I'm posting a detail of "A Moveable Feast" installation for the Resurrection: Beckoning the Crone show ...curated by Leslie Brown and opens this coming Saturday 5-10 pm at OCCCA, 117 N. Sycamore Street, Santa Ana, 92701I have "Memory Palace" (not pictured here) 93" x 66" mixed media on wallpaper and "Anonymous" (not shown) as well!

I'm taking June off social media. All of it. @kristineschomaker goes dark June 1.

I've been thinking about this for a while. The control it has over my life is real and I'm tired of pretending otherwise. The first thing I reach for in the morning. The last thing I look at at night. The way a bad comment can sit in my body for hours. The algorithm deciding who sees my work, who doesn't, what matters, what disappears. The politics. The negativity. The toxic conversations. The armchair critics. The post truth content that makes me feel like I'm losing my mind.

I've been reading and thinking a lot lately about the ways artists are taught to seek approval. To wait to be chosen. To measure their worth by who selects them and who doesn't. Social media is just another version of that same machine. Likes as validation. Followers as currency. Posting into the void and waiting to see if anyone cares.

I want to find out what happens when I stop.

This is an experiment. Can an artist thrive without it? I genuinely don't know. I'm nervous about the first few days. What do I do with that time? What do I reach for instead? But underneath the nerves there is relief. Real relief.

Here's what I'm doing instead. Going to see more art in person. Writing more. Spending more time in the studio. Reading actual books. Being a human in the world instead of a content creator performing being a human in the world.

Shoebox Arts will keep going. We have 11 incredible artists doing an Instagram takeover all month so follow along here @shoeboxarts.la for their work. Programming continues, Tuesday Community Conversations every week, Monday Masterclass launching in June, all of it. The community doesn't stop. I'm just stepping back from the noise to remember why I built it in the first place.

See you in July.

www.shoeboxarts.com

#artistlife #socialmediabreak #artistcommunity #shoeboxarts #communityovercompetition

PC Baha Danesh

What a night.

The opening reception for Waiting Rooms was everything. So many people came, sat in the chairs, put on the headphones, and just listened. Friends, strangers, people who knew exactly what they were looking at and people who were figuring it out in real time.
@monicamarksart made something really brave and really beautiful. And the room felt it.

If you missed the opening, you still have time. The exhibition runs through June 20th at Shoebox Projects at the Brewery.

And on June 13th, 2-4pm, come back for something special. Artist talk, guided meditation, and guest speakers. It's going to be its own experience.

June 13, 2-4pm
Through June 20 by appointment

Shoebox Projects at the Brewery
660 South Avenue 21 #3, Los Angeles

Contact shoeboxartsla@gmail.com to schedule a visit.

#shoeboxarts #waitingrooms #monicamarks #LAart

Oh my gosh. Phyllis Martinez. Feed Your Shadow. GO SEE THIS SHOW.

I've watched Phyllis work on this for over six months. 10-hour days. A completely new body of work. And she did it. She really did it.

These ceramic "shadow creatures" are emotional coin banks for the stuff we don't say out loud. Rage. Snark. Scheming.

Egotism. You write it down, burn it inside the sculpture. It's Jungian psychology made tangible and weird and beautiful and I am OBSESSED.

The orange and yellow ones!! The texture!! The grin!! The powerstance! If I had extra money...

On view through June 13 at the Los Angeles Art Association. Phyllis is there Saturdays 11am to 3pm. Artist Talk June 6th at 11am. Do not miss this.

#ceramicsculpture #handbuiltceramics #shadowwork #jungianpsychology

3 days.

Waiting Rooms opens Sunday and we are ready.

@monicamarksart has spent years photographing the spaces where we wait for news about people we love. Hospital rooms. Hallways. The small details you notice when there's nothing to do but notice things.

Twenty-three photographs. Twenty recorded stories. Live readings. And actual waiting room chairs where you can sit, put on headphones, and just... be in it for a minute.

This is the kind of show that stays with you.

Sunday May 31, 4-6pm

Shoebox Projects at the Brewery
660 South Avenue 21 #3, Los Angeles

#shoeboxarts #waitingrooms #monicamarks #LAart #breweryartscomplex

Installing @monicamarksart Waiting Room photos.
Her solo show opens this Sunday 4-6pm at Shoebox at the Brewery

#waitingrooms #monicamarks #fineartphotography

Sometimes you just need someone to look at your work with you and tell you the truth.

Not what's wrong with it. What's there. What's working. What story it's telling. How to present it to the world in a way that actually represents what you're making.

That's what a portfolio review with Kristine is. Thirty minutes on Zoom. Personalized feedback. A written report you can refer back to. Practical and specific.

"Kristine is a knowledgeable, insightful and creative resource in the art world of Los Angeles, and that has been a great asset in navigating my path as an artist." — Kathryn Pitt, artist

$50. Schedule at shoeboxartsla@gmail.com

www.shoeboxarts.com/membership
#portfolioreview #artistfeedback #shoeboxarts #artcareer #artistdevelopment

This saturday i'm doing a talk in santa monica and i really want you to come.

It's part of Artist Resource Collective LA West, a free all-day event with four speakers covering the stuff artists actually need: finance, resources, contracts, community. Food too.

I'm talking about finding and using resources to make your work. Where to look, how to ask, what to do when asking feels terrifying (which, same). Virginia Broersma from @theartistsoffice is talking about building real relationships in the art world. David Thomson is breaking down personal finance for artists. And Cara Miller is doing a deep dive on contracts.

All of it free. All day.

Saturday May 30 | 10:30am to 5pm Miles Memorial Playhouse 1130 Lincoln Blvd, Santa Monica

Also a Sunday event in Chinatown if you're on the east side. 939 Chung King Rd, 11am to 4pm.

Register https://youngarts.org/artist-resource-collective/livearc/

#ArtistResources #LAArtists #FreeEvent #ArtistLife #SantaMonica

I've been saving posts for weeks. Manifestos. Essays about endowments. Artists talking about breakdowns. All of it pointing at something I've been circling my whole career without having quite this language for it.

The art world is not a meritocracy. It's a network of private social ecosystems disguised as culture. And the waiting it asks of artists is spiritually fatal.

I started Shoebox in 2014 not knowing what I was doing. I had a feeling and I had to do something. As it grew I started to understand what it actually was. What it had been all along.

A commons. A circle. A room where artists stop being alone with it.

If any of this resonates, come find us. Tuesday Community Conversations are free and open to everyone. shoeboxarts.com or link in bio

New post on Substack going deeper on all of it.
shoeboxarts.substack.com or link in bio

#artistcommunity #artworld #culturalcommons #artistsupport #shoeboxarts

Installing "Waiting Rooms" this week at @shoeboxprojectsla

@monicamarksart brought everything — the photographs, the furniture, the magazines, the toys.The small details that make a waiting room feel exactly like a waiting room. Except the fake tree... Which apparently didn't fit in her car 🙄😉🤔 😂

The space is already being transformed. Not sure how it's going to feel living in a waiting room for 3 weeks.

Opening Sunday May 31st, 4–6pm. Shoebox Projects at the Brewery, 660 South Avenue 21 no 3

#shoeboxarts #waitingrooms #monicamarks #LAart #breweryartscomplex

So proud of our artists.

Three are at residencies. Several are in exhibitions throughout Southern California and across the United States. A couple have solo shows up right now. Everyone has been in their studio working hard.

And on top of all of this, they are applying for grants. Applying for more residencies. Submitting their work to more shows.

All of this despite the stress and anxiety we are all carrying right now. The world is a lot. And they are still making work, still putting themselves out there, still showing up.

That is everything.

#shoeboxarts #losangelesartist #artistcommunity #artistsupport #artlife

Some of our Shoebox artists went to visit Monica Marks at the Cannibal Flower show at Gabba Gallery in DTLA this afternoon and I am just so happy about this photo. Look at these humans!!

This is what it's all about. Artists showing up for each other. Friendships that started in a Zoom room and turn into gallery visits and genuine connection. I love this community so much.

Go see Monica's work along with 90 other talented artists many our friends at Gabba!!

#shoeboxarts #LAartists #artistcommunity #DTLAart #supportlocalart

.pro-gallery-wix-wrapper {display: block !important;} .pro-gallery-wix-wrapper .gallery-item-container {opacity: 1 !important; display: block !important;}

Follow us on Instagram

@shoeboxarts.la