Q: Can you talk about how you arrived at this work of exploring self-worth and validation, and their connection to the ways that people perceive us?
A: I received my degree from California State University Northridge in 2010. I was working on my master’s degree (I have my degree in both art history and studio art) in 2008 and I had a panic attack, the first panic attack I’ve ever had. It scared the heck out of me, so I started going to therapy and through that time is the first time I realized I have an eating disorder. It’s the first time where I really started talking about body image and my body in relation to food and in relation to the space that I take up in the world. My master’s thesis was I compared myself in real life to my avatar in Second Life [an online virtual world allowing users to create avatars for themselves to interact with other users; Schomaker describes her avatar as having been “tall, thin, beautiful, classy, everything that I’m not”] and that was a project called “My Life as an Avatar,” so that was kind of the start of exploring body image. After I graduated, I just started to use other modes of using my body in many different ways to talk about being plus size and what that means in the world.
--The San Diego Union Tribune