My work concentrates on the act of moving between locations and how it can transform our relationship with the practice of everyday living. This shifting from place to place has the ability to grasp the three divisions of time through the phenomena of memory, place and imagination. It is based on the idea that dwelling poetically and the act of creating move one towards the personal and the universal. This causes an awareness of not only one's morality but of their mortality.
The majority of the images come from traveling between small rural towns and large cities in the Midwest. The works are created using the process of painting, drawing, drafting and printmaking.
The work is proclaiming the ordinary as extraordinary. This is demonstrated through the representations of the everyday, such as the interior of the home or people on their daily commute. The work is articulating the idea that common events, like moving from point A to point B or eating a meal, are where we are making choices for a larger collective. However small these choices may seem, they cause us to ask complex questions. For example, "Do we support a local or global economy? Do we centralize our food systems or diversify them? Do we sacrifice the sacred act of living for the convenience of the industrial?
My work is created with the hope that it would stimulate a conversation about the sanctity of knowing one's neighbor, the importance of locality and the elevation of the commonplace to the remarkable.
Stephanie Barenz is an artist currently living in Wisconsin. She received her Bachelors of Art from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota, with a year spent in Florence, Italy. Stephanie spent one year as a resident artist at the Chicago Printmaker's Collaborative after graduating from college. She recently completed her MFA in Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
The majority of the images come from traveling between small rural towns and large cities in the Midwest. The works are created using the process of painting, drawing, drafting and printmaking.
The work is proclaiming the ordinary as extraordinary. This is demonstrated through the representations of the everyday, such as the interior of the home or people on their daily commute. The work is articulating the idea that common events, like moving from point A to point B or eating a meal, are where we are making choices for a larger collective. However small these choices may seem, they cause us to ask complex questions. For example, "Do we support a local or global economy? Do we centralize our food systems or diversify them? Do we sacrifice the sacred act of living for the convenience of the industrial?
My work is created with the hope that it would stimulate a conversation about the sanctity of knowing one's neighbor, the importance of locality and the elevation of the commonplace to the remarkable.
Stephanie Barenz is an artist currently living in Wisconsin. She received her Bachelors of Art from Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota, with a year spent in Florence, Italy. Stephanie spent one year as a resident artist at the Chicago Printmaker's Collaborative after graduating from college. She recently completed her MFA in Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
