Your dreams remember you...
Hello,
Welcome to my little world. I am a singer-songwriter and painter-illustrator (which often vessels me into other conjoining mediums) exploring what I call The Veil: that silk curtain in the wind between dreams and waking, life and death, me and you. I am interested in echoes, dreams, nightmares, creatures, the feminine, the mythological, wings, veins, scars, bodies, blood, fire, water, air, earth, cycles—the things we feel humming in the lights and shadows of places. Here I am. Here you are.
My mother tells me I came out of her womb with a pen in my hand and an insatiable curiosity. My feet were always dirty, my knees scraped, my head both here and elsewhere. No one taught me to be an artist; living did that. But I love learning and seeing, soaking and bending like a tree, and there are so many brilliant things to grow from. I attended the early college program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on scholarship at the age of 16, went on to get a BFA from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and am currently getting my MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Because I keep wanting to see, learn, and connect. That’s probably my favorite thing about learning, and about art — connection. Within and around oneself. I’ve had many shows, won awards, and done a bunch of things people noticed and thought to make note of, for which I am very grateful. You can view those in my CV if you really want to know. But really, I’d just like for you to connect in whatever way is meaningful to you. Or maybe you’ll forget about me and I’ll just be a whisper in the back of your brain. Either way, I’m happy to meet you here in this moment.
There are many things I’ve let out and others I’ve kept locked in a box deep inside me for many years. There are things finally emerging, things I am learning to hone. Sometimes I feel a thousand ancient lives within me and sometimes I feel all new and naïve — like the goop of a cocoon weaving itself into wings it will somehow know how to use. But these things are not disparate; there are red threads tying them together. The child is wise; the adult is knowing. And here I am; and here you are. Breathing in and out.
Stephanie LenWar
