Steph Patzer is a self-taught artist whose relationship with art began early and has remained a constant thread throughout her life. While her creative practice has ebbed and flowed over the years, art has always served as a vital outlet—one rooted in instinct, experimentation, and personal expression.
Steph does not limit herself to a single medium. Instead, she embraces variety, having worked with nearly every material at one point or another. This openness has allowed her work to evolve organically, guided more by feeling than formal structure.
For ten years, Steph created art for Junkstock, using cast-offs and discarded materials to repurpose what others had overlooked. She also developed a practice of rescuing old oil paintings with ornate frames, painting over them to merge her own inspired work with the history already embedded in the canvas. Through this process, she explores transformation, reuse, and the quiet stories held within forgotten objects.
At its core, Steph’s work is about reimagining—finding new life, meaning, and beauty in what already exists.
After many years away from making art, Steph felt a deep pull to return when a close friend began work that felt urgent and meaningful. That pull led her back to her own inner artist—and to this piece.
The Disappearing Woman was born from a lived experience as a menopausal woman and from the profound, life-altering impact of gender-affirming care. Before hormone replacement therapy with estrogen and progesterone, her body felt as though it was slowly erasing itself. Steph could not sleep. Her skin became rough and fragile, hair dry and brittle, and her body unfamiliar and diminished. She felt disconnected—less present, less whole.
HRT was not cosmetic or elective for her; it was restorative. It returned her ability to rest, to inhabit her body, and to feel like herself again. It gave Steph back a sense of wholeness.
This work speaks to the quiet erasure that can happen when care is denied or politicized. While the specific choices people make about their bodies are not Steph’s business, access to care is her business when it is threatened. The government has stepped into an arena that should be governed by autonomy, compassion, and medical expertise. Because she has the freedom and privilege to do so, Steph chooses to use her voice—standing beside and behind her friends, her family, and her community.
The Disappearing Woman is both personal and collective. It is about visibility, bodily autonomy, and the right of every human to have options that allow them to feel whole.
