Elizabeth M Stephens

Elizabeth M. Stephens has an ongoing love triangle with San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and New York City although she was born in West Virginia. She is a Professor of Art and of Digital Art/New Media and is affiliated with the Department of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Currently she is the chair of the Art Department. Stephens went to graduate school at Rutgers University where she studied with the great Feminist Artist Martha Rosler and the Flux Priest Geoffrey Hendricks. Stephens is an inter-media artist who works in sculpture, video installation, photography, web-based media, performance art and home renovation. Her most recent works include the bronze sculptural installation, The Academic/Porn Star Panty Collection; the road trip performance piece Wish You Were Here; the video installation, Kiss, as well as her ongoing collaboration with Annie Sprinkle in the Love Art Laboratory. She has exhibited in museums, galleries and non-profit spaces throughout the United States, Europe, Japan and Russia.

I was a feminist from the day I was born. Women wore the pants in my family and if the men thought otherwise they were immediately corrected. As I grew older and realized that this was not the case everywhere. I did what I could to be an equal. I have never seem myself as not. Upon entering the art world I realized what vast differences there are between the way men and women are perceived and valued. Again, through my own work and through my work as an educator I am participating in the feminist project of making the world an equal playing field for men, women, lesbians, queers, sex workers, professors, artists, trannys, septuagenarians and everyone else who wishes to play.