Stefanie Schwartz
I explore how focus, perception, and sensory experience shape how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world. My work in neural art and visual storytelling is rooted in lived experience. I’m especially drawn to how the way we hold our eyes can influence the brain—and help us feel more alive, creative and connected while balancing the brain back to whole.
Stefanie Schwartz is a professional photographer, transdisciplinary artist, and explorer of Neural Arts and Design Science. Her work spans photography, video, art direction, motion graphic design, and immersive media—anchored by a strong visual voice and deep sensitivity to perception, nature, and story.
She has created Emmy-winning motion design for networks like CNET Television and USA Network/Sci-Fi Channel, and contributed still and moving imagery to global companies including Roche, Salesforce, Sutter Health, and Stanford. Her photography and design work has supported innovation programs, cultural initiatives, and events for organizations like Working Mother Media, The Biomimicry Institute, Qualcomm, and SiliconView.
Stefanie holds a BFA from Syracuse University and has studied at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, The Biomimicry Institute, and the VR/AR Academy for Women. She is part of Design Science Studio, where she continues to shape conversations at the intersection of creativity, systems thinking, and human evolution.
Her creative approach has been deeply shaped by personal sensory experiences—including early hearing loss and the later development of stereo vision—which led to a deeper understanding of how she sees, senses, and connects. These embodied insights now inform her entry into the emerging field of neuroarts, where perception is explored as a potential tool for restoration, sensory coherence, and emotional connection. Her imagery serves as sensory nourishment: it can soothe the nervous system or awaken wonder, inviting a deeper sense of connection, presence, and possibility.
Whether through still imagery or immersive storytelling, her work often serves as a lens of wonder—a way to reconnect with the natural world and rediscover what many no longer take the time to see. She is currently developing Widening the Lens, a visual storytelling project and neuroarts-based inquiry into how the ways we focus—through our eyes, attention, and senses—shape our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world around us.
Her art has been exhibited at venues including the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
To explore Stefanie's portfolio, please visit her website at stefaniejstudio.com.
For inquiries, collaboration opportunities, to book or commission work, or to purchase art: stefaniejstudio@gmail.com.
Interests
My Areas of Interest & Focus in Neural Art
– Exploring how focus—and the way we hold our eyes—shapes perception and influences the brain
– Seeing and color as embodied, sensory experiences that shift through attention and awareness
– The interplay between nature and the nervous system, and how environment impacts regulation
– Widening the lens on perception—inviting others to see beyond learned systems and notice what's often overlooked
– Widening the field—expanding how we sense, process, and connect through full-body awareness
– Reawakening innate sensory intelligence through wonder, play, and direct experience
– Sharing lived sensory insight through photography, immersive media, and neural art
– Translating felt experience into visual forms that invite expanded states of seeing and feeling
– Using art, light, and visual storytelling to support nervous system coherence and presence
– Creating multisensory experiences that promote whole-brain integration and emotional connection
– Using artistic process and perception as tools for healing, neuroplasticity, and reconnection
– Whole-brain integration — supporting balance across hemispheres to reawaken embodied knowing. Bridging linear and nonlinear thinking is essential, especially in a time when educational systems have long emphasized the linear. I feel that our soul thrives in the nonlinear, and our Being thrives with the balance of both. Sharing that through art and focus deeply excites me, as it’s needed especially in these times.