Emily Steinberg bio
Emily Steinberg is a multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on
painting and visual narrative. Her work has been widely shown
and published by The New Yorker and Cleaver Magazine.
She lives just outside Philadelphia.
On this episode of ArtShow, artist Emily Steinberg sits down to talk with host Craig Stover about her life and art. Emily talks about her early days of making work, how it's changed over the years and how the autobiographical narrative is paramount in her art. She also talks about her studio practices, what she's thinking about when she's making art and why she prefers the materials that she uses. This was a very interesting, informative and lively conversation.
EDUCATION
1992 MFA, Painting, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
1987 BFA in Painting, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
1987 BA in European History, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 Diary Paintings, Locals, Wyndmor, PA
2018 Navigating the ArtWorld, Warner Gallery, O’Brien Arts Center,
St. Andrew’s School, Middletown, DE
2014 Boxing With Hitler, SFA, Frenchtown, NJ
2012 Porcelain, Crane Arts, Philadelphia, PA
2012 Cornices & Teacups, Schmidtberger Fine Art, Frenchtown, NJ
2012 Nano Portraits, Abington Art Center, Abington, PA
2010 Graphic Therapy, Penn State University, Abington, PA
2006 Odalisques, 55 Mercer Gallery, New York, NY
2002 Back to the Garden, 55 Mercer Gallery, New York, NY
2000 Encountering Giants, 55 Mercer Gallery, New York, NY
1992 New Paintings, University City Arts League, Philadelphia, PA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023 Worry, Soft Machine Gallery, Allentown, PA
2022 Residential Tourist, Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2021 I’m So Glad I’m Just Like You, Brick & Mortar Gallery, Easton, PA
2021 MASKED, Community Art Gallery, Penn State Hershey Medical Center
2019 IMPRESSION EXPRESSION INTERACTION, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
2019 Sick! Kranksein im Comic, The MuSeele, Göppingen, Germany
2018 Convivio; Jews, Hispanics and the Comics, Repair the World, Brooklyn, NY
2018 POW!!! Jewish Comic Art and Influence, Jewish Art Salon, Brooklyn, NY
2017 A Starling in the Shadows, Cerulean Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2017 Sick! Kranksein Im Comic: Reclaiming Illness Through Comics
Berlin Museum of Medical History @ the Charité, Berlin, Germany
2016 Two Women Painters, Schmidtberger Fine Art, Frenchtown, NJ
2015 Plan A: Artists as Adjuncts in Academia, Harrisburg, PA
2015 Gallery Artists, Schmidtberger Fine Art, Frenchtown, New Jersey
2014 Lilies, Figs and Folly: Contemporary Still Life, Cerulean Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2014 The Woodmere Annual: 73rd Juried Exhibition, Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA
2012 Network, Westbeth Gallery, New York, New York, NY
2004 Teacups, T Shirts and Birds, 55 Mercer Gallery, New York, NY
2002 Separate Realities, 55 Mercer Gallery, New York, NY
2000 Drawing With Color, Mangel Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2000 Figuratively Speaking, Community Arts Center, Wallingford, PA
1994 Rutgers National Works On/Of Paper, Stedman Gallery, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ,
1994 Roger Lapelle Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1993 And the Women Danced, Borowsky Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1993 Art of the State, The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA
1993 The Woodmere Annual: 52nd Juried Exhibition, Woodmere Museum, Philadelphia, PA
1992 The Woodmere Annual: 51st Juried Exhibition, Woodmere Museum, Philadelphia, PA
1992 Bucks Biennial Juried Exhibition, James A. Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA
1991 25 x 25, The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA
1990 The Small Painting, Abington Art Center, Abington, PA
1990 25 Years of Printmaking @ Penn, Arthur Ross Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
1989 Nipples on Fire, 1017 Arch, Philadelphia, PA
VISUAL NARRATIVE & ANIMATIONS
2023 “Glass House”, Cleaver Magazine
2023 Understanding Delirium, Arts & Design Research, Institute, Penn State University
2022 Frontline Nurses: Dispatches From The Covid- 19 Pandemic,
Arts & Design Research, Institute, Penn State University
2022 Emily Steinberg: Cartoonist Diary, The Comics Journal
2022 “War & Peace 2.0”, Cleaver Magazine
2021 “Ritual of Memory”, “Jewish Death and Dying”, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary
Journal of Jewish Studies, Ed: Tahneer Oksman, Laura Limonic, Purdue University Press
2021 “Ring The Bells”, COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology, Penn State University Press
2021 “In The Land of The Beech Trees”, Literature & Belief, Editor: Victoria Aarons,
Brigham Young University Press
2020 “Hot Pilgrim Calendar 1620”, The New Yorker Magazine
2020 “Six Days in November”, Cleaver Magazine
2020 “How to Allay Your Pre Election Anxiety”, The New Yorker Magazine/Daily Shouts
2020 “The Reckoning “, Studio for Sustainability and Social Action, Penn State University
2020 “Men O Pause”, M-Boldened: Menopause Conversations We All Need to Have,
Ed. Caroline Harris, Flint Books, UK
2020 “Paused”, Menopause: A Comic Treatment, Ed. MK Czerwiec,
Eisner Award, Best Anthology, Penn State University Press
2020 “As We Are: Reflections During Lockdown”, JewThink
2020 “In The Woods”, Cleaver Magazine
2020 “Quarantine Journal”, Cleaver Magazine
2020 “New Trends For Spring”, Cleaver Magazine
2020 “Ring The Bells”, Cleaver Magazine
2019 “Mid Century Hipster”, Cleaver Magazine
2019 “A National Emergency”, Cleaver Magazine
2018 “Jewish Motherhood/UnMotherhood”, Mamsie: Studies in the Maternal, Cambridge, UK
2018 “Paused”, Cleaver Magazine & The Annals of Internal Medicine
2018 “Drawing a Blank”, Cleaver Magazine
2018 “No Collusion!”, Cleaver Magazine
2017 “Berlin Story: Time, Memory, Place”, Cleaver Magazine
2015 “A MidSummer Soiree”, Cleaver Magazine
2014 “Broken Eggs”, Cleaver Magazine
2014 “2,000 Years and Change”, Jewish Comix Anthology, AH Comics
2013 “The Modernist Cabin”, Cleaver Magazine
2012 “Blogging Towards Oblivion”, The Moment, Larry Smith, Editor, HarperCollins
2009 “Certifiable Lifer”, The Pennsylvania Gazette Magazine
2008 - 09 “Graphic Therapy: Notes from the Gap Years”, SMITH Magazine
GRANTS & AWARDS
2021 Eisner Award, Best Anthology, Menopause: A Comic Treatment,
contributing artist, M.K. Czerwiec Editor, PSU Press
2020 SOVA|Studio for Sustainability & Social Action Grant, Penn State University
2019 General Education Course Microgrant, Penn State University
2005 Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, Johnson, Vermont
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2023 Samantha Baskind, “Broken Eggs/Broken Dreams”, Jewish Women In Comics,
H. Bauer, A. Greenbaum, S. Lightman, Syracuse University Press
2020 Emily Steinberg/Artist Profile, List Gallery, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA
2020 Dorothee Marx, “Representations of Fertility Tracking and Childlessness in
Contemporary Graphic Memoirs”, Laboring Bodies and the Quantified Self,
Columbia University Press, Transcript Publishing House
2020 Elisa Ludwig, “Learning at the Intersection of Art and Science: The Medical Humanities
Program Broadens the Minds of Future Doctors”, College of Medicine Alumni Magazine
2020 Sathyaraj Venkatesan & Chinmay Murali, “Drawing Infertility:
Interview with P. Knight, J. Johnson, E. Steinberg, and P. Potts”,
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics
2019 Victoria Aarons, Holocaust Graphic Narratives: Generation, Trauma & Memory,
Rutgers University Press
2019 Steph Lin, “Philly Graphic Novelist Explores the Emotional Roller Coaster of Hip
Replacement”, The Pulse, WHYY
2019 Sathyaraj Venkatesan, Chinmay Murali, “Graphic Medicine and the Critique of
Contemporary U.S. Healthcare”, Journal of Medical Humanities, Springer Nature
2019 Alexandra Alberda, Anna Feigenbaum, Ph.D., Katy Lindemann, Graphic Infertility:
Representations of Infertility in Comics and Graphic Novels, Bournemouth University, UK
2018 Sathyaraj Venkatesan, Chinmay Murali, “Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine”,
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 61, No.4
2018 Susan Squier, Ph.D., Introduction Paused, Cleaver Magazine
2017 Tahneer Oksman, Ph.D., Intro “Berlin Story: Time, Memory, Place”, Cleaver Magazine
2015 Denise Hill, Graphic “Narrative: Emily Steinberg”, New Pages
2015 Tahneer Oksman, Ph.D., Introduction “A Midsummer Soiree”, Cleaver Magazine
2014 Tahneer Oksman, Ph.D. Introduction “Broken Eggs”, Cleaver Magazine
2014 Regina Broscius, “Lecturer’s Graphic Novel Takes a ‘Heartbreaking' Look at Infertility”,
PSU/News
2013 Tahneer Oksman, Ph.D, “The Poetry of Comics”, Cleaver Magazine
2012 Elizabeth Johnson, “Emily Steinberg-What You See Is What You Get”,
The Easton Irregular
2012 Victoria Donohue, “Fab Four”, The Philadelphia Inquirer
2010 Steven Bergson, “Graphic Therapy”, Assoc. of Jewish Libraries REVIEWS
2010 Collette Bloom, “Graphic Therapy”, 34th Street Magazine
2010 Andy Stettler “Emily Steinberg Reveals Graphic Thoughts in Graphic Therapy”,
Montgomery Media
2010 Sarah Crawford, “Never Talk to Strangers?”, First Person Arts
2009 Ada Price, “Webcomics, Storytelling and Books from 'Smith' Online Magazine”
Publishers Weekly
2008 Jeff Newalt, “In Need of Therapy”, HEEB,
2008 Rachel Fershleiser, “My Name is Emily and I'm a Recovering Artist”, SMITH Magazine
2008 Jim Gladstone, “Background Therapy: The Story Behind the Gap Year Comics”, SMITH
LECTURES/PANELS/WORKSHOPS
2024 Graphic Medicine, Panel, NeMLA Conference, Boston, MA
2020 Graphic Psyche, Lecture & Workshop, Arts & Design Research Incubator,
Penn State University, State College, Pennsylvania
2020 Graphic Psyche, Lecture & Workshop, Kilachand Honors College & School of Visual
Arts, Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts
2019 First Tuesday: Visual Narrative Workshop, Writers Room, Drexel University
2018 Jewish Women In Comics, European Assoc. for Jewish Studies Conference,
Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland,
2018 International Collaborative Comics, Comics Arts Conference,
Comic-Con International, San Diego, California.
2018 Graphic Narrative Seminar, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA.
2017 International Collaborative TransMedia Narrative Comics, Comics Arts Conference,
Comic-Con International, San Diego, California,
2017 TransMedia Narrative, San Diego State University, La Jolla, California.
2016 Graphic Psyche, Comics & Medicine Conference, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK,
2010 Graphic Therapy, Penn State University/Abington College, Abington, PA.
2010 Spilling Your Guts, First Person Arts Salon, Philadelphia, PA.
2010 Chicks & Comix, Mary Jacobs Library, Rocky Hill, NJ.
2010 Graphic Therapy, The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA.
2009 Graphic Therapy, Writers House, Franklin & Marshall, Lancaster, PA.
TEACHING
2011 - Lecturer in Fine Art & Art History, Penn State University, Abington, PA
2019 - 2023 Teaching Artist in Residence, Drexel College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA
2002 - 09 Art & Drama, Saligman Middle School, Elkins Park, PA
2002 - 03 Lecturer in Art History, Philadelphia University, Philadelphia, PA
2001 - 03 Lecturer in Art History & Drawing, Bucks County Community College, Newtown, PA
1993 - 2002 Lecturer, Education Department, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA
1997 Lecturer in Drawing, Philadelphia University, Philadelphia, PA
1994 - 95 Lecturer in Art History, Studio Art, Holy Family University, Philadelphia, PA
1992 - 94 Lecturer in Art History, Community Scholars Program, Arcadia University, Glenside, PA
1994 Lecturer in Drawing, Community College of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
1992 - 03 Lecturer in Art History, Manor Junior College, Abington, PA
1993 - 94 Visiting Artist, Creative Artists Network, Philadelphia, PA
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2021 - 2023 Artist in Residence, Art & Design Research Institute, Penn State University
2019 - Visual Narrative Editor, Cleaver Magazine
2017 Lynd Ward Graphic Novel Prize Jury, Pennsylvania Center for the Book,
Penn State University, State College, Pennsylvania
1992 - 95 Art in City Hall, Program Coordinator, Philadelphia, PA
1992 - 93 Art Consultant, artSouth, Philadelphia, PA
BOARDS & ORGANIZATIONS
2019 - Board Member, Cheltenham Chamber of Citizens
2017 - Citizen’s Voice of Cheltenham (CVC) Founding Member
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10 Questions with Emily Steinberg
Emily Steinberg is a Philadelphia-based multi-disciplinary artist with a focus on painting and visual narrative. She has an extensive background in illustration and comic art and has been widely published in The New Yorker and Cleaver Magazine. She is also the newest artist to join the WheelHouse Art family. Here are answers to 10 burning questions so we can all get to know each other a little better.
1.Outside of art, what hobbies do you have or how do you like to spend your free time?
Working in my garden, reading about politics or history, walking my dog in the woods
2. What do you like to listen to while working in your studio?
Born in 1964, the end of the baby boomers, Dylan and Leonard Cohen’s dense lyrical storytelling is always on….. along with a wide variety of singer song writers from the 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s….
3. Do you have any pets?
Gus is my 13 year old Australian Shepard. He is my fur child.
4. What is your favorite [book, movie, or television show?
Films: The Graduate, 1967 and The Royal Tennebaums, Wes Anderson, 2002
5. What is the best concert you’ve ever been to?
Leonard Cohen - I’m Your Man, Walnut Street Theater, Philadelphia, 1988
6. Which famous historical person would you want to spend the day with?
I’d like to spend the day with so many historical people. It’s hard to pick. Currently, I’d enjoying walking around Paris with Philip Guston.
7. What would be the title of your memoir?
2008-2010, I wrote and drew a 250 page graphic Novel memoir Titled Graphic Therapy: Notes From The Gap Years. Looking for a publisher.
8. Where do you go when you need fresh inspiration?
The Whissahickon Woods, near me.
9. What is your biggest pet peeve?
At the moment….. Leaf Blowers
10. What is the best advice someone has ever given you?
It Doesn’t Matter
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Philly graphic novelist explores the emotional roller coaster of hip replacement
Emily Steinberg, a painter and graphic novelist, believes comics are a powerful way to confront feelings and combat loneliness in medicine.
By Steph Yin | July 29, 2019
"Mid-Century Hipster" is about Philadelphia graphic novelist Emily Steinberg's experience of getting a hip replacement. (Courtesy of Emily Steinberg)
Diagnoses, surgeries, birth and deaths.
Many of life’s most intense moments happen in hospitals and doctors’ offices. A major medical event is perhaps one of the most universal human experiences. Yet it can also be one of the loneliest.
Emily Steinberg, a Philadelphia-based painter and graphic novelist, wants to address this — by bringing emotions more to the forefront in medicine.
Steinberg makes comics — or visual narratives, as she likes to call them — that grapple with events in her life, and the emotional ripples that come with them, many of which happen to be medical.
Medical experiences, she said, “are particularly evocative times in people’s lives. It’s a time full fear and hope and longing. It’s very dramatic. I think that lends itself really well to visual storytelling.”
Her latest comic recounts a recent hip replacement and was just published in the summer issue of Philadelphia’s Cleaver Magazine. “Six-and-a-half years ago, dancing like a 20-something freak at my niece’s wedding, my left hip snapped,” the story opens.
The work, called “Mid-Century Hipster,” is filled with panels of deep colors and rough lines sketching out feelings of fear, anxiety, depression, and, ultimately, triumph.
In one panel, a nurse, rendered in a saturated magenta, holds a larger-than-life syringe and seems to stare directly at the reader. In another, a post-op Steinberg droops toward the ground, as if she’s melting, struggling to walk to the bathroom in her hospital room. Often her panels have just one dominant hue, with accent colors for important words, or certain details, like the red hospital socks that stay with Steinberg through her recovery.
Originally trained as a painter, Steinberg broadened her practice to include autobiographical comics about a decade ago. She has created visual narratives that deal with depression, menopause, and infertility.
“Broken Eggs” recounts Emily Steinberg’s struggles with infertility. (Courtesy of Emily Steinberg)
With “Mid-Century Hipster,” Steinberg said part of her motivation was that none of the step-by-step guides or informational resources she consulted prepared her for the psychological roller coaster of her surgery.
“I mean, it was scary. I was really scared. Just being surrounded by all these doctors with their masks and their headgear, it’s a lot of visual stuff to look at and process,” she said.
Not to mention, she added, “the whole idea of someone cutting into your body and taking out your hip joint with a saw, literally, and then putting something else in.”
A lot of emotional resonance came from little things, Steinberg said, which she highlighted in her comic — things like the weird disinfectant she had to shower with the night before the procedure, the jarring buzz of a hospital at 5 a.m. — making everything feel “like life or death, even though it’s not,” she says — and the angst of painkiller-induced constipation.
Visual storytelling as therapy
Making comics helps Steinberg confront her feelings about big life changes.
“I think my process is incredibly cathartic because I don’t really hold anything back,” she said. “It’s a good way to get to know who you are.”
She hopes to pass along comics as a therapeutic tool to others, too. Currently, Steinberg is the artist-in-residence at Drexel University College of Medicine, where she teaches visual storytelling to medical students and residents.
She believes having medical practitioners translate their personal experiences into words and images helps them work through their own sentiments and connect more with patients. One of her students, she said, used her course to process realizations about his privilege, which he came to after working at a clinic with many low-income patients.
“It allows them to kind of get into their whole mental-emotional space,” she said. “The medical profession can be very cut and dried, and it has to be on some level right? And I think that’s the inroads with graphic medicine.”
She also thinks that visual narrative lends itself particularly well to exploring feelings, calling it a cinematic art form.
Plus, people are drawn to combinations of images and words, she said, so the form fosters connection.
“When words and images are put together, that can be somehow even more powerful than either of them on their own,” she said. “It’s almost like there’s a spark that allows for double communication, that is incredibly energetic.”
“Paused,” a graphic novel by Emily Steinberg, focuses on her experience of menopause.
The graphic medicine movement
Steinberg is not alone — she’s part of a movement, called graphic medicine, that is all about using visual narrative to tell medical stories. In the last decade, graphic medicine has gained momentum as a genre and community.
On the provider side, graphic medicine is a way to build empathy. On the patient side, it can demystify medicine and make navigating the healthcare system less scary.
Certainly, one of the central objectives of graphic medicine is “making everything more accessible and less freaky to people,” Steinberg said. “Let’s say you’re given a horrible diagnosis. If you can read something and say, ‘Wow, OK, people go through this,’ you feel much less alone. That’s comforting.”
“And that’s something I’ve heard over and over again about my own work,” she added. “People say to me, ‘I don’t feel like I’m alone anymore.’”
Steinberg is cooking up dreams of running a visual storytelling workshop with hospital patients. She’s also working on a new medical comic, “Gondolier in the Bathroom,” which is about her mother and dementia.
“It’s about what it does to the family. And what it does to the person,” she said. “It’s an incredible story, and it’s taken me forever to write it. My mother died 16 years ago. So I have not been able to do it yet, but it’s there and it’s coming.”
It has been a little over a year since Steinberg’s hip replacement. She said her new hip is performing very well — she walks five miles a day.
“Last year at this time, I would be lucky if I could walk from my bedroom to the living room without wincing,” she said.
She was also recently preparing to go to the doctor for an anniversary check-up.
“I’m going to bring ‘Mid-Century Hipster’ and show them,” she said.
Maybe it will create some dialogue between the patient and practitioner.
