Stephens studied Fine Arts at
Tufts University,
The Museum School, and
Rutgers University. She worked with
Martha Rosler and
Geoffrey Hendricks in her graduate education. She has been a professor at UCSC since 1993, chaired the department from 2006 until 2009 and again from 2017 until 2020.
Love Art Laboratory In December 2004, Stephens committed to doing seven years of art projects about love with her wife and art collaborator,
Annie Sprinkle. They call this their
Love Art Laboratory. Part of their project was to do an experimental art wedding each year, and each year had a different theme and color. The seven-year structure was adapted to their project by invitation of artist
Linda M. Montano. Sprinkle and Stephens have done seventeen art weddings, fourteen with ecosexual themes. Critics relate the project to contemporary political debates including marriage equality,
ecofeminism, and the environmental movement. Critics also note that Stephens' work explores and challenges the validity of the boundary between what is "art," and what is "pornography." The Schlesinger Library at Harvard University acquired Stephen's papers, primarily focused on the Love Art Laboratory, and including her and her partner's work on Goodbye Gauley Mountain and their work at Documenta 2017.
Ecosexuality Starting with their 2008 performance wedding to the Earth, Stephens and her partner
Annie Sprinkle became pioneers of ecosexuality, a kind of earth-loving sexual identity, which states, "The Earth is our lover." Their Ecosex Manifesto proclaims that anyone can identify as an Ecosexual along with being "GLBTQI, heterosexual, asexual, and/or Other." They married the Earth, Sky, Sea, Moon, Appalachian Mountains, the Sun, and other non-human entities in nine different countries. Stephen's and Sprinkle's 2011 White Wedding to the Snow at the deconsecrated
Saint Brigid's Church (Ottawa), by then St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, followed their performance at Montreal's
Edgy Women Festival.
Feature films Most recently Stephens has produced and directed two feature documentary films with Annie Sprinkle:
Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure (2017) and
Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story (2013), a film addressing
Mountaintop removal mining near her birthplace and its effects on the environment and nearby communities.
International exhibitions Her work has been shown internationally, including at
Museum Kunstpalast (
Düsseldorf), El Ojo Atomico Antimuseo de Arte Contemporáneo (
Spain),
Museo Reina Sophia (Madrid), the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 53rd
Venice Biennale, and
Documenta 14. In 2017, Stephens and her wife/collaborator
Annie Sprinkle were official artists in
Documenta 14. They presented performances and visual art, lectured, and previewed their new film documentary, Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure. == Awards ==