“Stephanie” is a visual character exploration I began developing in the fall semester. In a desperate pursuit of inspiration for a story, I decided to visit a known scam-artist psychic to see what kind of raw material I could draw from our session. Sure enough, she gave me a whole cast of characters. She, of course, insisted I already knew them, but I, of course, did not.

The most interesting character she described was a woman named Stephanie. Stephanie was said to inhabit the spectral landscapes of my hometown. She existed on the periphery, neither fully present nor entirely absent. She was an elusive figure I didn’t know well but was told I felt deeply connected to.

This encounter sparked the development of my thesis—a year-long exploration through photography, writing, knitting, and printmaking, motivated by bringing Stephanie to life. Stephanie, played by Lauren Luke, is a drifting apparition of embodied contradictions. Through this process, I have uncovered fragments of her identity, and in doing so, found my own Frankenstein in Stephanie.