Short Bio

Linda Friedman Schmidt is a self-taught, German-born American artist best known for her emotional narrative portraits created from discarded clothing. She transforms the old into new, the ordinary into the extraordinary. Her process is a material expression of what is happening globally – the unraveling and alteration of the world as we knew it as we prepare to move on to something new.

Linda’s artwork has been exhibited internationally and throughout the United States in group shows at the American Folk Art Museum, Allentown Art Museum, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, Morris Museum, New Jersey State Museum, Montclair Art Museum, Monmouth Museum, Noyes Museum of Art, Attleboro Art Museum, Alexandria Museum of Art, Koehnline Museum of Art, Jersey City Museum, Loveland Museum, Cahoon Museum of American Art, Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art, Fuller Craft Museum, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles among others. Her work has been featured in seven shows at the Untitled Space Gallery, New York City. Linda has presented solo exhibitions at the Lancaster Quilt & Textile Museum and Pascal Gallery at Ramapo College. Internationally her work has been exhibited in the UK, Japan, Portugal, and Argentina. Prestigious curators who have selected her work for exhibitions include artists Faith Ringgold, Judy Chicago, MoMA curator Anne Umland, renowned art critic Donald Kuspit, Renwick Gallery founder Lloyd Herman, among others. Linda’s artwork is held in multiple esteemed private collections.

Her publications include Hyperallergic and notable international textile magazines Textiel Plus and Mr X Stitch; she has been interviewed and profiled in Interlocutor Magazine, Living Artists Magazine, and more. Some of the many books that include her work are Threads of Tomorrow, Natural Impressions, Dress [with] Sense, The Art of Mothering: Our Lives in Colour and Shadow, Fiberarts Design Book 7, Contemporary Hooked Art: Themes and Memories, Not Normal: Art in the Age of Trump. Linda is the subject of a 2017 short documentary film Under Her Skin: Linda Friedman Schmidt directed by Kelsey and Rémy Bennett. In 2023 she received a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship Finalist Award.