Reclaiming My Time

Stephanie has stepped out of K-12 schools after the privilege of directly teaching and encouraging the creativity of over thirty-six-hundred students in seventeen years. That’s more than a career average for most teachers.

I’m still involved in education, but now I’m taking the time to support what matters the most at this moment. Since teaching requires a tremendous amount of energy on the best and easiest days, and teaching art at middle and high school levels takes a great deal more, my personal artistic practice was left only to a short window of time during academic breaks when I wasn’t recuperating or preparing for the next go-around. I’m trying out something new for me. This career shift allows me to better explore the media and ideas I have toyed with this entire time, and to move forward with fewer restraints.

The playfulness is returning to my work, which has always held some impishness and irreverence. I usually contrast joy and silliness in my work with poignancy or touching moments. Painting and drawing has always felt to me like representing a snapshot of a moment through my own language and bending color and light to amplify a meaning of the snapshot. As I paint more and draw more and do both more frequently, I’m charmed and curious at this process and the snapshots I get to draw and paint.

With the American legal and political climate in its current state in 2025, I am exploring via sculpture the motivations of what attracts people to hard-line party ideals, and in extreme cases the idolatry of personality. This in-progress series will be an installation of hundreds of mixed media pieces playing upon attracting and then repelling the viewer. Progress will be documented on the Six Toes Studio Instagram.