Stephanie Spitz
Stephanie Spitz is an artist, higher education administrator, and social justice researcher.
She received her MFA in Studio Art from Montclair State University and her BFA in Painting from Drake University. She is currently working on her MA in Higher Education at Montclair State University.
As an artist, she explores the parallels between art making and home building through painting, drawing, video, and installation. She has exhibited internationally and in 2016 she was an artist-in-residence at the New Rochelle Downtown Artist Residency in conjunction with Residency Unlimited.
She currently works as a Higher Education Administrator and Adjunct Professor for the Department of Art and Design at Montclair State University.
As an administrator at Montclair for almost a decade, Stephanie has served on the Executive Board of the University Senate, the Statewide Council of the American Federation of Teachers Union Local 1904, and on the Executive Board of the Disability Caucus.
Both her administrative work and research are based in social justice and intersectionality. Her focus is on arts education as a tool for social justice; racial equity and equity-mindedness; weight-based discrimination; feminist theory; and embodiment.
Stephanie also enjoys writing poetry, taking care of elderly dachshunds, and traveling with her loved ones.
Artist Statement
Stephanie Spitz focuses on the home as a structure for family dynamics by recreating aspects of home renovation and daily life.
Her paintings use remembered domestic colors and construction materials that she often uses while renovating houses with her family. The process of painting and drawing involves a technique that resembles paint by number, speaking to the generic nature of interior decorating and the ongoing process of renovation.
The home is also a structure for the construction of personal identity. In her video and photography work she combines re-enactments and destructive actions of renovation with the joyful scenes of her childhood from home videos to demonstrate how repeated domestic activity becomes part of her identity.
Installations explore the idea of space as malleable and temporary. Renovation materials and actions are utilized again as a form of drawing and ultimately reveal the fragility of walls, homes, and self-identity.