About

​​Born in Toronto, Stephanie Rayner spent fifteen years of adventuring by traveling the globe’s wild places over land by horse and dugout canoe before beginning her art career.  She has presented her works and lectures at eminent gatherings worldwide, including The Vatican Symposium on Religion and Science, and worked in dialogue with experts ranging from astronomers at the Millennial Conference on Cosmological Morphology to physicists at Switzerland’s Institute for Theoretical Physics to geneticists working on The Human Genome Project.

Known for probing explorations of both spiritual and scientific terrain, Rayner’s work often encourages viewers to reflect on the frontiers of human knowledge, inviting them into communion with uncertain forces immersed in metaphysical waters. In her artwork CHILD BOOK Rayner offers viewers a miniature Wunderkammer, in which she secrets enigmatic objects like sacred offerings, from white snail shells to quail feathers to a cast silver apple leaf, and the sliver cuffed carved ebony staves where she inscribed scrolls with the story of her own Creation, fusing the fables of Genesis with bittersweet vignettes from her dark, enchanted childhood.  

Where the Haggadah encourages us to see the Passover tale of trauma and deliverance through the perspective of Four Children, Rayner’s text and sculpture invites us to cast a child’s eye on our own lost Edens.  We should harbor no illusions, however, of recapturing our innocence.  As her sand clock filled with apple seeds and children’s milk teeth suggests, we get but one bite at the apple.  Time seals the gates of Paradise.

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Aaron Rosen, PhD (Cantab)

Executive Director, The Clemente Course in the Humanities

Founder & Director, The Parsonage Gallery

Visiting Professor, King's College London

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https://www.slu.edu/mocra/exhibitions/liminal.php