Why Do You Walk?
My work is about how our external surroundings shape our internal landscapes. Slow acts of noticing transform our lives from feeling uninhabitable to a feeling of belonging.
Walking or finding ways to access the world through our senses allows us to hold two opposites in our minds: The permanence we feel when we ground ourselves in a place and the impermanence of the place itself.
"There is no house like the house of belonging."
- David Whyte
Why Water?
We belong to ourselves, our places, and each other, yet those relationships constantly change and transform. These ideas are represented for me in landscapes defined by water. They are grounding yet evolving all at once.
In the course of both my artistic and my life journeys, I have been particularly drawn to water. I came of age near some of the largest lakes in the world, The Great Lakes. I currently live between two lakes in Madison, WI. I have lived in coastal Shanghai, 上海, Chinese for “On the Sea” and near West Lake in Hangzhou.
Water’s many material and geographic forms, powerfully represent movement, transition, flow, and change. The power and pull of water are due to its prominent place within the course of human history, shaping geographies and moving us across and between continents. Water also moves within us, giving us life as it has all life on Earth. And yet like the unpredictable and ever-changing nature of human experience, so the course of flowing water is often uncertain, subject to change.
From West to East.
The scenes and imagery depicted in my work are from places that have shifted my understanding of home — from Shanghai to Southeast Asia to Lake Michigan. Each place stood out to me because they shared my vision of my home regardless of location.
Having lived a large portion of my adult life abroad, I have realized the great importance of encountering a broad range of people and places in order to arrive at a more complete sense of self, but also a greater sense of shared humanity.
How do you create your work?
Like water, my work is fluid, using several processes, including printmaking, collage, painting, and drawing. Printmaking has fostered in me a love for the playfulness and chance involved in techniques of iteration, where matrices are used and re-used in new ways. I often combine figurative traces of my immediate or recollected surroundings with abstract mark-making—for example, painting over collages or transferring them onto different surfaces. This layering of forms—and of aesthetic traditions, both Western and Eastern—is analogous to the layering of experiences that has characterized my travels, where objective reality is shaded by the subjective experience of it.
Artist Bio
Stephanie splits her time between the roles of artist and gallery director in Madison, WI. She is currently the Gallery Director at Overture Center for the Arts. In this role she is able to connect with artists and art organizations in the Wisconsin area. She works out of her studio on Madison's east side and holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She taught at several institutions for over 12 years, including Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Concordia International School in Shanghai.
Stephanie has completed residencies at the Art Students League of New York, the Chicago Printmakers’ Collaborative, and the Pfister Hotel AiR program. She has exhibited her works at selected exhibition sites including Sino ArtSpace in Shanghai, Solonia Art Center in Suzhou, Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Wisconsin Art, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Art and Lit Lab, and the Walker’s Point Center for the Arts in Milwaukee.
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"Night Swimming" Art Print
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"World of Light" Art Print
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"Acquainted" Art Print
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"Early Morning in Pudong" Art Print
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"I have been following Stephanie's extraordinary work for many years. Her pieces feel like a meditation on place and travel. They are like falling into a poem.“ - David M.
Collect An Original
There are several mixed media paintings available from each of Stephanie's recent series. Many of them come framed in raw maple or a handcrafted wooden frame.
Want to get in touch?
Contact Stephanie with your question or comments. She and her team are here to help!