Hi, I'm Stephanie.

I'm an artist and writer in Iowa who lives in a world of metaphor, gets very excited about birds, and has never been good at accepting “that's just how it is” as an answer.

I'm community-taught, relentlessly curious, and much more loyal to an idea than to any particular medium. If something wants to be watercolor, I'll paint it. If it wants charcoal, collage, fiber, words—or something I haven't figured out yet—I'll follow it there.

Making things is only part of my world. I'm also interested in what happens around the work: the relationships we build, the ways we support each other, and whether the structures we've inherited are actually serving the people inside them.

I don't have a tidy title that wraps all of this up. I'm okay with that.

A person with short hair and glasses wearing a blue sweater stands in front of shelves with decorative items and books.

I took the scenic route.

I have a bachelor's degree in music performance and spent years playing bassoon. Hand injuries eventually made me put the instrument down.

After becoming a mom, I needed a creative outlet again. I started by dyeing silk. And then I kept following things. I learned by experimenting, taking workshops, asking questions, learning from other artists, and making plenty of things that didn't work.

For years, I went in circles trying to figure out how to define myself. What kind of artist was I? Where did the writing fit? Was I supposed to pick a medium? A subject? A lane?

I'm only recently realizing that maybe I don't need a definition at all.

The work around the work

Somewhere along the way, I also became very interested in what happens around creative work.

Who gets access. Who gets supported. Who gets paid. Who gets told they're legitimate. Who gets to rest. Who gets to decide what success looks like in the first place.

I've spent years working with people on their careers, first as a recruiter and resume writer and later as a coach. I've also found myself increasingly involved in arts communities—not just participating in them, but organizing, connecting people, and questioning the structures we're asking artists to work within.

That work takes different forms. Creative Nexus is an interdisciplinary community built around creating on your own terms, together. Through The Trellis, I work one-on-one with people figuring out what they actually want their creative lives to look like—not what they think they're supposed to look like.

I care about the work people create. I also care about whether they're extracting everything from themselves in order to create it.

A little more official

Leadership

Founder, Creative Nexus — 2023–present
Creator of an interdisciplinary creative community and collaborative residency program.

President, Iowa Artists — 2026–present
Previously Vice President (2025–2026) and Membership Chair (2023–2025).

Selected Exhibitions

Collective Humanity — Urbandale Art Gallery, 2026
Iowa Artists State Show — Ankeny, 2026
Iowa Artists Gallery Hop — Des Moines Botanical Gardens, 2026
Birds — Women in Arts Network, 2025
Biennial Exhibition — Pearson Lakes Art Center, 2025
Women’s Work — 119 North Weatherly Art Gallery, 2023
Iowa Artists 50th Anniversary Traveling Art Show — multiple Iowa venues, 2021
Minnetrista Annual Juried Art Show and Sale — 2018 & 2019

Selected Recognition + Publications

2026 — Bridging the Gap, Honorable Mention, Iowa Artists State Show
2026 — Bridging the Gap, 1st Place, Iowa Artists Region 7 Show
2026 — Hidden, 2nd Place, Iowa Artists Region 7 Show
2025 — Time & Memory, Arts to Hearts Project virtual exhibition + artist’s book
2024 — Sturnus, 1st Place, Iowa Artists Region 7 Show
2023 — Artist Talk Magazine, Issue 24

Interviews

Women in Arts Network — 2025
Standout Creatives — 2024
Canvas Rebel Magazine — 2023

Education

B.M. in Music Performance, Bassoon — Georgia State University, summa cum laude, 2007

Full CV

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I think a lot about the safety to be yourself - your whole authentic self - and being honest about disabilities and medical need is definitely part of that. As someone with a chronic illness that leads to all sorts of unpredictable and exciting event
For me this means: Learning from nature how to live in community and reciprocity Learning to love my chronic-illness-having-self as the real and flawed person I am Leaning into to community (literally scheduling it into my week) even though it isn
I often wish life could be set it and forget it. Be soft. Let the world leave its mark on you. But there’s more to it than that. You have to process and heal those marks. Read today’s The Wild Path post at the Substack link in bio.
Nine times out of ten, I'm thinking about community and reciprocity, finding my way back to hearing nature, and unlearning everything society has told me I should value. My art is conceptual. It’s not about pretty pieces to hang on your walls
It’s easy to think in all or none binaries. It’s also unhelpfully incorrect. Societally, the expectation is that we get our food from the grocery store. If we have the means and inclination, we might get it from a ✨fancy✨ grocery store.
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