Steph Jordan | Art and Design Portfolio

Art plays a critical role in our collective action and holds memories, both in the process of its making and in the visual result.

In my practice, art and design serve as (1) a connective activity that occupies our hands as we tell stories to eachother, (2) a reflective practice that fires synapses in new ways for new understanding, even of old problems, and (3) a complex communication tool, to think through and be with the thorny problems of AI vs. environments. My theory-based art and design practice is rooted in the cultural production of intersectional feminist activists and anarchopunk histories largely based in the US, transnational works by queer ecology theorists and naturalists, the generosity of indigenous thought leaders that share nature-led ways of knowing, and the community-led methods of the feminist science lab, feminist technoscience and art-science lineages.

The following are select examples of designs and design thinking (largely in collaboration with others) of the justice-oriented and community-engaged art-science that defines my recent work.

You may also follow this link for my Teaching and Mentorship Portfolio.

ART OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE | HYDRO PARK COMMUNITY ART SERIES (2026)

As the inaugural Ethnographer-in-Residence at the University of Michigan’s Center for Ethics, Society and Computing, we gather the community labeled as a “sacrifice zone” where a classified national security data center for nuclear bomb simulation is proposed to be built. Through large public community art parties full of sun, water, free food, free games and free activities, we gather residents, non-profits, scientists, policymakers, artists, poets, farmers, service workers, emergency responders, parents, children, caretakers, technologists, parks workers, and many other walks of life to be in conversation together expressing themselves in stories and in art-making. These practices use river water, wind, foraged materials and the hands of locals to produce 100s of artworks that will be exhibited in a large-scale installation of movement art as a testament to the community’s resilience and resistance.

Image description: green, blue and black sumanigashi marbled paper with poem handwritten in blue ink, begins “In the margins they place her…” made by Ypsilanti community member.
Image description: black and green sumanigashi marbled paper with letter to the ecology of Hydro Park stating “THANK YOU I’m sorry thank you” made by Ypsilanti community member.
Image description: light blue, green and black sumanisgashi marbled paper with green handwritten text “We are Nature Defending Ourself” created by Ypsilanti community member.
Image description: two linocut block prints, one silver ink on cardboard that reads MAKE joy NOT BOMBS next to black ink on white cardstock that reads GROW WHERE YOU ARE PLANTED with an iris at the top of the page. Blocks made by Steph Jordan, printed by Ypsilanti community members.

ETHNOGRAPHICALLY-INFORMED ARTWORK | NEWARK WETLANDS (2025)

In support of visionary artist Amanda Thackray, these public artworks were informed by interviews and ethnographic insights from 3-years of engagement via art-science gatherings around the toxic superfund sites of the Passaic River. These works include a large scale installation and activation at Index Gallery, a permanent installation at the city of Newark Riverfront Park and a commissioned mural in the city of Newark. The ethnographic data, quotations and images from this serve as basis for multiple artistic installations and serves as the final material for Alexandra Chang’s Ecoart portfolio course on community-engaged and decolonized art practice at The Rutgers Price Institute for Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience.

Image description: Celebratory flags at the Newark Riverfront Park, glowing on sunny day with blue skies and cloud, lush green trees and vegetation below.
Image description: Green triangle flag waving in strong wind on a sunny day with clear blue skies, bird embroidered at the base with pink dots at the tip.
Image description: large-scale mural in downtown Newark, NJ, with blue, green and orange striations reflecting sumanigashi paper marbling and topographic maps of river water.
Image description: people gathered at the 2026 inauguration of the flag installation during River Day at the Newark Riverfront Park iconic orange boardwalk, on a sunny day with river behind, shoreline across the way with many trees.
Image description: activation of Newark Wetlands project at Index Gallery in Newark, NJ, with multiple people below large hanging community-made installation resembling aquatic grasses of the Passaic River, person crouched with rainbow paper fan in left corner, large sumanigashi marbled paper on the walls.

PLACE-BASED ARTWORK | CURRENTS (2024)

These art-science workshops and events at the waterfront leverage different artistic practices to either metaphorically invoke the river or were functionally possible because of the river and what is found in its watershed. Events include foraging for natural pigments to create watercolors, sumanigashi paper marbling, charcoal rubbings at the watershed, weaving a loom of locally-made artworks and much more. Additional images from these events are available on the main Hydrobodies project page.

Image description: Steph Jordan holding stream assessment paper on clipboard, group of residents listening, standing on orange boardwalk, water to their back with grey skies and trees visible across the river.
Image description: Newark residents engaged in art-science activity around a table on the orange boardwalk, grey skies, river behind and a building visible across the way.
Image description: Newark residents engaged in art-science event making paper loom, on orange boardwalk, ice cream man in costume holding cotton candy on bottom right of image, all standing in front of the Passaic River with buildings across the way.

COMMUNITY-LED DESIGN | RIPARIAN CHORUS ZINE (2026)

In collaboration with visionary artist Amanda Thackray, funded in part by the EPA through the Hudson River Foundation artist-in-residence for the Passaic River, this zine reflects one piece of a 3-year engagement around the superfund sites in and around Newark, NJ. This document is a community desire for a touchstone, something to refer to and gather around, that represents their pride, concern and questions around the toxic watershed that feeds their family gardens and precipitates into the air they breathe daily. Zine includes resident quotations, poetry, historical context and artwork. Risograph, editioned to 1000, translated in Spanish here, forthcoming Portuguese.

Image description: Riparian Chorus and Coro Riberño zines, pink text, blue water, on wooden table.
Image description: Riparian Chorus zine display at Newark Riverfront park.
Image description: Local resident reaches for zine from display at Newark Riverfront Park. Multiple people on paved walkway, blue skies, triangle flags wave in the air.
Image description: centerfold of Riparian Chorus risograph zine, blue water texture with outline of river waste and trash removed.
Image description: page of Riparian chorus risograph zine, blue ink on off-white paper with blue water border. Poem by artist troizel, translated in Spanish, previously performed in activation of Newark Wetlands installation at Index Gallery.
LPR ZINE_20 page_FINALDownload

ART AS REFLECTIVE TOOL | STRUCTURE & FLUIDITY (2021)

This black and white pencil drawing, digitally rendered for maximum contrast, is an isolated moment in a series of digital artworks and freeform “hundreds” writings about the ways in which nature will always reconstitute itself in the face of a colonizing mechanical man-made object and the ways in which colonizing mechanical man-made objects are constituted by repurposing natural geometries. An excerpt:

A DuckDuckGo search for “glass sea sponge” results in Ernst Haeckel. Suddenly, the writings of Sabrina Imbler swirl: of Haeckel’s violent evolutionary racism, eugenic desires for purity, the profound beauty of these images, the symbolism of the glass sea sponge as everlasting heteromonogamous love, the profoundly queer observed existence of this species. Water itself is a miscellaneous category, a diversity, contaminant as much as lifegiving, contained as much as chaotic, sacred as much as mundane. I am reminded of Stefan Helmreich’s work, “waves” of feminism, theoretical flows, currents, circulations, oceanization—metaphors where water helps us make sense of ourselves.

Glitchy black and white digital digital rendering of a pencil drawing of a glass sea sponge. The image has has many very sharp intersecting triangles with a fuzzy pore at the end of each exterior spoke.
Image description: Glitchy black and white digital digital rendering of a pencil drawing of a glass sea sponge. The image has has many very sharp intersecting triangles with a fuzzy pore at the end of each exterior spoke.

NO AI IN DESIGN | Stop the Data Center (2026)

Our movement art and public media limit the use of extractive processes and materials as much as possible, specifically boycotting use of AI in the digital and employing environmentally safe practices in the analog. Large public media are often scans of handmade elements layered simply with text.

Image description: 2026 flyer for all ages linocut block printing community art party with free food, four images of prints: bugs printed on jeans backpocket, pink and turquoise prints including “community over data centers” and “a gardener is a futurist”, blocks including iconic activist fist, black ink on white cardstock “Grow Where You Are Planted” and activist fist
Image description: Flyer for 2026 Hydro Park Community Art Summer Series with sumanigashi paper marbling, linocut block printing and foraged natural pigment images.
Image description: Pastel artwork of nuclear bomb explosion with 90s aesthetic MS Word text formatting. Recruiting sound artists and musicians for a Stop the Data Center music compilation.
Image description: Yard signs made through donated recycled candidates materials, cardboard stencils and spraypaint, by hand and in community (no AI, no paid printing)
Image description: Yard signs made through donated recycled candidates materials, cardboard stencils and spraypaint, by hand and in community (no AI, no paid printing)

Digital Media b/w Physical Media | Stop the Data Center Music Compilation (2026)

For every piece of art and design I build both a digital engagement and a physical practice, something to place on a shelf, hold in your hands, keep as a memory to remind of the experience or action. Below, the Stop the Data Center campaign music compilation Odious Machine is available on tape and CD format, with a record release show held in Ypsilanti, MI.

Image description: album cover for “Odious Machine: A Stop the Data Center Compilation.” Black and brown toned digitally manipulated image of detonated Los Alamos nuclear bomb.