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 ornate surfaces. Her work is rooted in fiber, and consists of soft sculptural objects, garments, and woven structures. With a background in fiber art as well as costume and garment design, she uses couture sewing and tailoring techniques to inform her slow and intentional approach. Her whimsical pieces explore inner landscapes, intuition, and embodied ways of knowing. Immersed in the tactile world of textiles and the slow, meditative rhythm of sewing, each stitch becomes a ritualistic gesture—a quiet invocation of the “as above, so below” principle. She envisions portals into underworlds and otherworldly realms, microcosms that reflect macrocosms, and symbols representative of the subtle and unseen forces shaping our world. Stark is influenced by occult and contemplative practices, glamour magic, and gender theory. Glamour magic—an occult tradition rooted in practices of enchantment, illusion, and transformation—plays a critical role in Stark's work. Historically used by those operating outside dominant power structures—especially femmes and witches—as a strategy of both concealment and resistance, glamour magic functions in her pieces as a way to shift perception, construct new realities, and reframe identity. She employs it through opulent materials, performative garments, and aesthetic charm as a subversive tool for empowerment, self-invention, and energetic protection.

Stark also draws inspiration from experimental fashion, spiritualist art, and surrealism. Attention to detail is central to her work; these small moments form a relational network, an interconnected web that gently opens space for quiet contemplations and sensorial possibilities. Through abstraction, the pieces hold space for multiplicity and intuitive reading, inviting projection, interpretation, and nonlinear connections. The work invites feeling your way through rather than relying strictly on conceptual constructs—guided instead by sensation and emotional resonance.

Stark continually 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. Through her work, she reimagines systems and worlds defined by greater softness, care, and connection.