MIGUEL JUAREZ staff Artist Linda Vonderschmidt-LaStella displays a work in progress in her Metuchen home studio.
BY BRYAN SABELLA
Staff Writer
Sculptor Linda Vonderschmidt-LaStella’s Metuchen home exudes artistic sensibility.
The accents and swirls that are part of the exterior paint job, the mosaic images incorporated into the kitchen floor tiles, and the sculptures that give the interior walls a colorful and three-dimensional quality all contribute to the sense that an artist lives there.
“Home Temple IV (Winter)”
That her home incorporates so much of her work reflects her philosophy.
"Creativity is not something at the fringes of life — art is not on the edges of life — it’s at the heart of it," she said.
Vonderschmidt-LaStella has carved for herself, both literally and figuratively, a successful career in the visual arts.
Along the way, she has accomplished what so few of us ever seem to: her vocation is also her avocation, the things she loves doing are her job.
“Home Temple VI (They Flew …)”
Working out of her home studio, dubbed "Earthsongs," since 1998, Vonderschmidt-LaStella is set for a busy couple of months.
In March, she’ll be the featured artist for Women’s Month at the Montclair Library, giving a slide show and lecture March 11, and directing a hands-on clay workshop for teens on the evening of March 24.
In April, her ceramic wall works will be the subject of an exhibit at the G.J. Cloninger Gallery in Morris Plains.
From June 4 to June 29, her one-person exhibit "WomanSpirit" will be featured at the Ocean County Artist’s Guild in Island Heights.
“Veiled Woman X”
Her work can also be seen as part of the New Jersey Arts Annual exhibit at the Noyes Museum in Oceanville through March 14.
"I was a high school teacher for the first half of my life," the Baltimore native said during a recent interview in her home office.
That all changed after she received her master’s degree in fine arts from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., in 1985.
By the next year, she had moved into a studio on the grounds of Neumann College in Aston, Pa., and began doing her first commissions for corporate and private clients.
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing.
For as many commissions she received, there were plenty she didn’t.
"My joke is, I’ve been rejected by hospitals around the country," she said.
Thirteen years ago, Linda met her husband, Nino, and his job caused them to relocate to central New Jersey.
Vonderschmidt-LaStella took a job teaching at St. Peter’s High School in New Brunswick, where they just happened to have a professional art gallery — which she ended up running.
Only a couple years later, however, she says she "made a complete break from full-time teaching. I launched out on my own."
Recently, Vonderschmidt-LaStella has returned to teaching on a part-time basis, working two days a week with younger children, this time at Newark’s Our Lady of Good Counsel elementary school.
"It’s a perfect situation," she says. Aside from helping supplement her income, she’s found that young children are very receptive and enthusiastic about art.
The school is not in the best of neighborhoods, and the students’ lives are often fraught with hardship, she said.
"It’s a place that really needs art, and the principal was wise enough to know that," she said.
To top it all off, Vonderschmidt-LaStella has been very active with the Edison Arts Society since its inception several years ago, and she’s currently serving as the director of its gallery.
There’s a seemingly spiritual theme running through her work.
Her round wall pieces evoke aspects related to many native traditions, from the Aztec calendar to the mandalas of Eastern spiritual traditions.
Her "Veiled Women" series grapples with the restrictions placed on women in Islam, sometimes willingly accepted, other times thrust upon them.
"Home Temples," a recent series of works at least partially inspired by the events of Sept. 11, 2001, aims to convey the sense that home is "the place where we face the reality of our God and ourselves."
Vonderschmidt-LaStella sees her work as having a natural orientation. She pointed out that much of it deals with the passage of time, the changes of the seasons, the cycles of the moon.
"The things I connect with and spring off of are nature, certainly, and who we are as people. I do see it as way to get in touch with one’s self."
Her work with clay reflects that earth-centric orientation.
"When you’re working with clay, you’re working with an element of the earth," she said. "It absolutely requires that you work with its process: there are some things you can do with it when it’s wet, things you can do when it’s drying. It’s a much more relational experience than [that of] a painter working in acrylics.
"And then you offer it up to the fire," she laughed.