Elizabeth Stephens
Elizabeth M. "Beth" Stephens (born November 18, 1960) is an American film maker, artist, sculptor, photographer, professor and two time Chair of the Art Department at UC Santa Cruz. Stephens, who describes herself as "ecosexual", collaborates with her wife since 2002, ecosexual artist, radical sex educator, and performer Annie Sprinkle. Life and career. Stephens was born in Montgomery, West Virginia on November 18, 1960. Her family co-owned Marathon Coal-bit company. She grew up in Appalachia, moving to Boston, New Jersey, and later to San Francisco. 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. 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." 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.” 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. 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.