Emily Ryan Stark is an artist and bookworm from Western Montana. Her pieces explore the interplay between esotericism, gender studies, and ritualistic craft practices. She received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a BS from the University of Oregon, and a BA from the University of Montana. She was awarded a 2023-2024 Windgate Artist Fellowship and Creative Research Grant from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts. Recently, she has been an artist-in-residence at Vermont Studio Center, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and Open AIR Montana. Stark has participated in numerous exhibitions and served as a Visiting Professor of Fiber at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Skidmore College, and the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design at Georgia State University. As an INFP daydreamer, she is drawn to the surreal, the strange, and the mysterious. She is an Aries Sun, Cancer Moon, and Cancer Rising Sign.

Stark engages in a process-focused practice that emphasizes craft and detailed surfaces. Her work is rooted in fiber and consists of soft sculptural objects, garments, and woven structures. Her whimsical pieces explore inner landscapes, intuition, and embodied ways of knowing. Immersed in the tactile world of textiles, and the slow and meditative act of sewing, each stitch becomes becomes a ritualistic gesture representing the “as above, so below” concept. She envisions portals into underworlds and otherworldly realms, microcosms that reflect macrocosms, and symbols representative of the subtle and unseen forces permeating our world. Stark is influenced by occult and contemplative practices, glamour magic, science fiction, and gender theory. She examines the ways in which we experience materials—both in a felt sense, and as complex carriers of histories, and how the systems and norms we are entangled in influence our emotions, relationships, and attachments.