Open Calls for Artists

Tattooing is one of humanity's oldest and most universal art forms, reaching across civilizations and centuries as a means of conveying status, belonging, memory, and meaning. The Human Canvas at Mosaic Art Collective brings together works that explore this rich tradition in all its complexity — from the intimate bond between artist and skin to the permanence of ink as a vessel for personal narrative and cultural identity. The exhibition traces tattoo culture across its many dimensions: hand-tapped ancestral techniques, the aesthetics of rebellion, the reclamation of marked bodies, and the evolving dialogue between folk tradition and fine art. Spanning photography, painting, sculpture, video, installation, and mixed media, the works on view invite visitors to consider tattooing not merely as decoration but as a living archive — simultaneously sacred and subversive, deeply individual and profoundly communal. Whether examining ritual, transformation, heritage, or resistance, The Human Canvas celebrates an enduring practice that turns the body itself into a site of art and meaning.

Karl Schmitz is an artist whose abstract paintings explore the edges between complexity and simplicity, order and disorder, and intrinsic and projected meaning. Karl recently moved to Manchester from Poughkeepsie, NY where he had served as president of the Barrett Art Center. He currently maintains a studio at the Mosaic Art Collective in Manchester, NH.

How do we define ourselves? By our values, hopes, dreams, and fears. By our experiences in the past and present, the societies that raised us, the cultures and beliefs we hold. So many things shape who we are and who we hope to be. We are each unique individuals and part of a greater whole — circumstances guide us, but ultimately we each decide what is most important to honor within ourselves. Shaping Ourselves gathers work from artists reflecting on identity in its many forms: who we are as individuals, who we are together, and the forces — chosen and inherited — that make us. The exhibition embraces broad interpretations of the theme, offering a range of perspectives on what it means to become oneself.