on becoming an artist
Erika Steffen was born in New Jersey. When she was 10 years old, her family moved to Ireland where she attended a convent school on a working farm. This experience had a major influence on her decision to study as an artist. She was educated at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and Moore College of Art, earning a BFA in painting in 1979. Living in Philadelphia, she exhibited multi-media work, collaborated with other artists, and read her poetry in performance spaces.
After moving to Frenchtown, a small town on the Delaware River, Erika set up a business as a graphic designer. The digital studio allowed her to unite a love of word imagery with design, color and line. She produced several chapbooks of poetry with illustration, and focused her output to works on paper. Her pieces from this time have moved away from traditional media to include tactile natural materials such as mica, wasp paper and thin sheets of brass. In 1995, she joined with other artists in the area as part of a collective gallery.
From years of travel in Europe, Erika had developed her interest in medieval architecture, bas relief, and religious iconography, by creating an extensive collection of photographic patterns and textures. As way to process, combine and re-utilize her stored imagery; she began a series of work of intense manipulation of photograph and drawing into poetic narratives. Since 2010, Erika has divided her time between her homes in the States and the Pyrenees of France. She has exhibited work in galleries and art tours in New Jersey as well as shows in France.