Stephanie Shelton was born in Chattanooga, TN and is currently pursuing a BFA with a concentration in Photography and Media Art from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
In addition to making photographs and compositing videos, she enjoys drawing, painting, and costuming. She is always eager to learn interdisciplinary skills, and has been experimenting with sound and prop design during the past year. Most recently, she has taken advantage of the opportunity to explore new ideas in an installation context by positioning audio and video pieces within meticulously constructed environments of large sculptural forms and textures.
For the past year or so, my artistic process has involved transforming a space (usually my studio) into an immersive alternate world. I construct walls and barriers to isolate and control the environment, then reintroduce different forms of colored light to the space. I’ve experimented with surround sound design, both miniature and large-scale 3D objects, and the juxtaposition of live and recorded video feeds projected onto sculptural textures layered on the walls and ceiling.
This type of work is often motivated by my own affinity for fantasy and sci-fi genres, and I am still very interested in a sort of world-building process. However, I have recently been engaging with the disconnections and broken narratives often found in my own dreams. I have vivid dreams and can usually recall them well, so I have been making an effort to writing down as much as I can remember about to inspire elements within the work. I am particularly interested in the possibilities of lucid dreaming. In a lucid dream, the person becomes conscious of the fact that s/he is dreaming and “unlocks” the potential to construct any type of environment imaginable. Through my process of construction, I aim to create engaging pieces which suggest that perhaps the viewer has stepped into an alien world or a dream.