Now an Austin based artist, Stella Alesi was born on Long island, New York in 1963. She was raised in the state of Liberty and Prosperity- New Jersey. With her heart set for the hub of culture and art, she attended Parsons School of Design in New York City. With stints in Paris and Los Angeles, she finished her undergraduate degree at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Alesi’s graduate work was completed at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. With an incredible passion and eye for design, her work stretches across numerous styles and mediums. She characterizes her practice by her willingness to test the boundaries of what it means to be an artist and her willingness to test new approaches and visual languages. Her talents include drawing, painting, collage, photography and large-scale wall pieces. In her practice, Alesi emphasizes the importance of failure as a way of continuing the creation process and moving forward. This practice and encouragement of failure is Alesi’s way of challenging the systems of ‘taught’ art and the established structures of cultural and artistic institutions. For the last 25 years Stella Alesi has resided in Austin Texas creating work for many private and commercial collections. Alesi also has a large-scale art piece titled, “Simplify” which was installed in August 2019 in the lobby of The Foundry in Austin, Texas. Alesi taught photography at the Austin Community College and ran a very successful photography business for over 15 years. In 2005 she was awarded a Brown Foundation Full Fellowship to attend a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. She and her husband Leon exhibit and promote their own work during Austin’s open studio tours as well as curate and produce exhibitions of emerging artists in their in-house gallery BLACKBOX.