Phia Spencer

Biography

Phia Spencer is a Chicagoland-born, Midwest-based interdisciplinary artist. Working across a myriad of printmaking, photographic, and painterly processes — with a special affinity for the techniques which settle in the in-between — she creates prints, artist books, and installations exploring the nature of language, the vitality of the derivative, and the intricacies of memory.

Spencer recently served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Studio Art in Printmaking at Hope College. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design and a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College in Interdisciplinary Studies: Literature, Philosophy, and Studio Art. Spencer’s work has been exhibited in the United States; “The Echo & The Trace,” her most recent body of work, was shown in Rhode Island. As of late, her research has taken her to Sweden, Czechia, Germany, and New York City with the support of the West Bay Travel Grant.

At present, Spencer maintains a practice rooted in the notion of ekphrasis – understood as a cyclical, translation process between mediums of visual and literary origin. She regards ekphrasis as a method for exploring personal and collective memory, artistic originality, ephemerality, and transcendence. Foundational to Spencer’s practice are analog acts of redaction, repetition, recontextualization, and reframing, which are applied to historically significant works of literature and visual art along with fodder from both public and personal archives. Her time at Notre Dame will be dedicated to cultivating a new body of creative work through serigraphic, lithographic, and experimental processes and the advancement of creative and written scholarship engaging ekphrasis in contemporary art.

Research Interests: Printmaking, Photography, Ekphrasis as Interart Practice, Art & Literature, Art & Language