Selected exhibitions, public art, gallery activity, media, photography, digital projects and documentary work by Rachel Schmeidler.
Rachel Schmeidler is a Los Angeles–based multidisciplinary artist working across silkscreen, painting, photography, stereoscopic imaging, digital media, public-image archives and documentary portraiture. Her work repeatedly returns to the way images become public evidence, cultural memory and mythology.
For nearly two decades, Hollywood Most Wanted has transformed booking photographs into contemporary portraiture and social commentary. Parallel projects have extended that inquiry into organized-crime history, Holocaust memory, animal advocacy, interactive media, 3D photography, Los Angeles portraiture and independent editorial publishing.
Carnegie Mellon University — School of Art; Art and German. In 1996, Schmeidler was a student artist/intern on Douglas Cooper and Stephen Brockmann’s Kleinmarkthalle Mural in Frankfurt am Main. The 45-panel civic mural was developed through interviews with elderly Frankfurt residents, supported by Deutsche Bank Bauspar, Robert Bosch GmbH, the Roy A. Hunt Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and donated to the City of Frankfurt.
Founder and creative force behind an ongoing portrait and documentary project preserving the people, neighborhoods and stories that shape Los Angeles through photography, interviews, moving image and community-based storytelling.
The long-running art project expands into an independent Los Angeles publication connecting celebrity, law, public records, culture, mapped data and the visual archive. Schmeidler serves as artist, founder and editor.
Long-form interview revisiting the evolution of Hollywood Most Wanted, Hollywood Least Wanted and Rooted in Los Angeles.
EL PAÍS / ICON revisited Schmeidler’s work within a feature on how police photographs enter celebrity mythology and public memory.
Digital editorial project published under Rachel Schmeidler’s byline, extending the visual language of Hollywood Most Wanted into cultural writing about celebrity, history and public image. Recovered archive references include pieces on Charlie Sheen, Steve McQueen, David Bowie and Dennis Hopper.
Large-scale presentation across ArcLight Hollywood, March 13–April 28, bringing celebrity, music and political mugshot portraiture into a shared installation. Contemporary coverage describes a portfolio approaching 70 works.
A surviving 2010 article archive shows Schmeidler publishing cultural commentary alongside the visual project, establishing an early connection between image-making, history and editorial work that now continues through Hollywood Most Wanted.
Multimedia benefit exhibition of anaglyphic shelter-animal portraits, with 3D versions of Hollywood Most Wanted, created to support animals facing euthanasia in Los Angeles municipal shelters. The event included Zachary Quinto and was covered by the Los Angeles Times.
Premiere of an 18-work series of silk-screened mugshot portraits examining Jewish American organized-crime history, immigration, assimilation, notoriety and American mythology.
Founded a charitable art initiative using photography, exhibitions and public storytelling to support vulnerable animals and challenge the visual language of “wanted” imagery.
The Los Angeles Times documented Schmeidler’s painted and silk-screened celebrity booking portraits on view at ArcLight Sherman Oaks.
CNN’s Showbiz Tonight filmed Schmeidler with the work in a nationally broadcast studio/exhibition segment, documenting process, subjects and the cultural fascination surrounding celebrity booking photographs.
Coverage expanded from the Los Angeles Times and Daily Trojan to international media, including Icelandic publication Vísir.
Early public presentation of the series, on view through June 21, 2007. Boing Boing highlighted the transformation of celebrity booking images into works on paper.
October 5 exhibition hosted by Zachary Quinto. WireImage/Getty documentation places Schmeidler with Milo Ventimiglia, Kristen Bell, Jack Coleman, Hayden Panettiere, Neil Patrick Harris and other attendees.
Co-founded and operated a gallery at 9013½ Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. Contemporary coverage identifies Schmeidler as one of the gallery founders and documents her role bringing Gottfried Helnwein’s work to the space after hearing him speak at the Museum of Tolerance.
Schmeidler-Goetz Gallery presented a Helnwein one-man print exhibition in connection with the 7th Annual West Hollywood Art Walk. The gallery’s Melrose Avenue site sat within the triangular district later identified in city planning as the Melrose Triangle redevelopment area.
Helnwein exhibition archive ↗ · California / Melrose Triangle planning record ↗
Student artist/intern on Douglas Cooper and Stephen Brockmann’s 45-panel public mural developed with Carnegie Mellon students and elderly Frankfurt residents. Schmeidler, an Art and German student, worked directly with resident interview groups in German; the completed mural was donated to the City of Frankfurt.
Silkscreen, painting, mixed media and digital transformations of booking photographs; celebrity culture, law, public judgment and image circulation.
Portrait series using historic mugshots to examine immigration, assimilation, criminal mythology and the American story.
Art-and-advocacy project using portraiture, 3D photography, exhibitions and fundraising to draw attention to shelter animals.
Interactive digital work using archival perpetrator mugshots from the Nordhausen-Dora/Buchenwald history to explore memory, identity, repetition and inherited history.
Experimental anaglyphic portrait practice spanning shelter-animal work and celebrity 3D photography. Archival documentation names Tom Hanks, John Travolta, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner and Dakota Fanning among photographed subjects.
Contemporary portrait and documentary practice combining photography, interviews, video, public art and an expanding Los Angeles archive.