Stephanie Pennypacker - Departure Point

Hey everyone, I'm Stephanie. I am a senior Visual Studies major. I grew up in Worcester, Pennsylvania. Which is basically in between Philadelphia and the middle of nowhere. I usually just tell people I’m from Norristown because it’s easier that way. I work at Petsmart (and do nothing but pet dogs all day) and more recently at the Free Library of Philadelphia. I spend most of my time (while I’m not in class) working on the piles of stuff I need to get done while watching Netflix.

         My main motivation for my work this semester is to try to find out who I am as an artist since I haven’t really figured that out yet. I’ve spent my first 3 years at this school dipping my toes into different mediums and I’ve found out what I enjoy working with and what I don’t really enjoy working with. I also want to figure out how to utilize art as a way to help other people in terms of art therapy. When it comes to these specific artworks I am presenting to you guys, I’ve been obsessed with embroidery and other art relating to textiles, this obsession spans back to high school when I was first exposed to batik (which is the second image) I have found that I gravitate toward processes that require a lot of detailed labor and time. Having said that, I really enjoy photography, I always have. I just haven’t had the opportunity to take an actual class concentrating on photo.

         The concept behind my first piece that I’m sharing is a realization of my mental map through embroidery because thats the way that I thought illustrated how my mind works best , I stitched together my map street by street like I do when I am actually navigating the city. My second piece is my first batik which was just experimentation with the medium, the bear doesn’t really hold any deeper meaning. My third piece is a halftone print, which was part of a series I titled “unknown winners” I however do not have the rest of the series photographed. I was focusing on sports that weren’t allotted the same kind of airtime that the more “important” sports had during the Olympics. The concept was more important to me at that time since I was still on the rowing team. The last three were just experimentations with different mediums which were tied to assigned prompts and themes.

My biggest weakness when it comes to my inspiration for the art I make is that i like everything to be personal and thats not always a good thing . I stick too close to the familiar and i struggle with pushing myself further out of my box. I also know little to nothing about taking and producing photographs and i am interested to see  how i will end up translating my style through this new medium. 

Edit (to answer question(s)): the first image of the map is not finished yet which is why it looks incomplete...i probably should have said that somewhere. the clay object that looks like a pie is a mandala made out of individual tiles mounted on wood.