In an interview
with The Rack,
artist Rob Schamberger spoke about his work with WWE, including being a part of
Wrestlemania XXX. Here are highlights:
On working with WWE for
WrestleMania 30: “This is such a cool opportunity that WWE has given
me here; my display is going to be right inside the front doors for Axxess at
the Convention Center. I’ll be set up right outside the Superstore. We’re going
to have over 100 paintings on display for people to be able to purchase. I’ll
also be doing live art there for all four days and this isn’t just for the
Axxess sessions; like the doors open around 11:00 am or noon each day and that
part is free to the public and yeah, I’ll be doing a giant 8’x4′ painting there
that I’ll be working on all four days; there’s more details about exactly what
is going to be on that painting, but it’s going to be really, really cool. A lot
of the watercolors you’ve seen me put up lately are one’s I’ve made getting
ready for the show, so there will be a lot of bigger pieces as well and even
some of the Champions pieces I’ll even have there.”
On his
project with Mick Foley: “Yeah, this is another one of those things
that I couldn’t quite believe came together as easily as it did. Turns out, Mick
has been a fan of my work for a while but he didn’t know about me; he just
recognized the paintings he saw. But he’s just so busy and has so much
information coming in over time, he never knew who the artist was doing this
stuff. When I saw the raffle fundraiser that we was doing for RAINN (Rape,
Abuse, Incest National Network), I really wanted to be a part of that, because
giving back to those less fortunate and to various causes is very important to
me. Through my art last year, I was able to raise $10,000 for various charities
and it’s something I also wanted to do this year; thank you to all the people
who made that happen.
I saw he was doing that, so I e-mailed him and
introduced myself and said I’d like to donate a painting of the winner’s choice;
well, actually at first I said I’d donate a painting of him (Mick) and he came
back saying ‘Well, if somebody wins this and I might not be their favorite
wrestler, so let’s keep it open to them.’ So, I’ll do a portrait of whoever
their favorite wrestler is; along with all those other awesome prizes in there:
the trip to WrestleMania and the Hall of Fame, JR’s show, I think there’s even a
Disney World prize in there and you get a tour from Scotty 2 Hotty.
He
was so energetic about it, so excited; as soon as I e-mailed him, I went to bed
shortly after because I think it was during RAW that I e-mailed him and when I
woke up he’d already tweeted it out before we’d even fully spoken together, he
was so excited to have this be part of it. Yeah, it was just so neat and he’s as
genuine and cool of a guy as everyone tells you he is.”
On when
he became a fan of wrestling: “I got into it when I was 18. Like every
other 18-year-old who lives on his own, I was at my parent’s doing laundry on a
Monday Night and my step-father who’d been a fan back in the 60’s and 70’s was
flipping through the channels and landed on Ric Flair doing a promo on Nitro,
this would have been about 1998, and I was just hooked right then. The next
week, I was just looking for wrestling, because at the time I didn’t know the
difference between the shows or anything, and I landed on RAW and back in 1998
they were just killing it; everyone was firing on all cylinders and I’ve been a
fan since.”
