Sandy Schimmel began her professional career painting murals. She went on to design and hand-paint needlepoint canvasses. She  spent a year as a hand-bag designer...and was always painting portraits “on the side.”

Sandy studied mosaics in Turkey, glass in Venice. While in Venice she fell in love with a stained glass portrait. It was too expensive to buy and too heavy to carry. She decided she was going to have to recreate it herself.

Working with stained glass turned out to be more difficult than Sandy originally anticipated. She could not find the colors or the sizes in glass. She tried ceramic. Too bulky, not enough color. Finally it her her!

She began cutting up accumulated paper and cards - recycling junk mail, advertisements, postcards and greeting cards. She found what she was looking for - a portrait in mosaic using an insanely diverse variety of materials. Ink colors are far more diverse than glass or tile...yes - the materials are free, but the talent, priceless.