Stephanie Sarley

Stephanie Sarley (born (1988-06-21)June 21, 1988) is a contemporary American artist. She is a multimedia artist known for her surrealistic humor.

Sarley is best known for her "fruit art videos", which appeared on Instagram beginning in late 2015. Additionally, she is known for creating series of flower-themed and talking vaginas known as "Orcunts" and "Crotch Monsters", respectively. She is also the author of the adult coloring book Dick Dog and Friends, a surrealist publication, in 2013.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, featured by numerous media outlets globally, and has been praised as "genius".

Early life

Sarley was born in Berkeley, California, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she studied and apprenticed in classical arts, eventually studying print-making at Laney College in Oakland.

Artwork

With a background consisting of traditional fine arts apprenticeships such as printmaking, stonesculpting and tattooing, Sarley has worked professionally as an artist for almost a decade. Starting in 2013, when she began working on her computer, Sarley has been working primarily in the digital medium. Soon after this, Sarley released her coloring book Dick Dog and Friends, a 40-page book of surrealistic cartoons.

Since December 2015, Sarley has been best known for her fruit-art videos, which have garnered media attention. In her videos, female sexuality is recognized as an independent phenomenon of male action. Her fruit videos illustrate the reconquest of female sexuality from sociocultural norms. Noted art critic Jerry Saltz has praised her videos online, saying, "You. Are. Genius."

In early 2015, she became known for two of her illustrative concepts: Crotch Monsters— anthropomorphized vaginas, modern interpretations of vagina loquens and vagina dentata; and Orcunts— florid vagina drawings that have drawn comparison to Georgia O'Keeffe.

Sarley's artwork deals with issues surrounding sexism, censorship, and women's empowerment.

Publications

In 2013, Sarley published the adult coloring book Dick Dog And Friends which had been distributed via Last Gasp.

Several prominent publications have featured Sarley's art including Hatezine, art Das Kunstmagazin, and Elle Brazil. Sarely's art has also appeared in the "munchies" section of Vice Magazine.

Reception

Sarley has been referred to as the "patron saint of vagina drawings." Critics have compared her work to Gustav Courbet, Egon Schiele, Betty Tompkins, Andy Warhol, and Joan Semmel.

Instagram has removed Sarley's account multiple times for violating its terms of service regarding sexually suggestive content. Her account has been restored by Instagram after each removal.

Sarley's fruit art has garnered international attention from various news and magazine sources.

Sarley's work has been subject to numerous copyright violations and appropriations.

In popular culture

• Sarley's vagina pictures have been suggested as a response to "dick pics" and "requests for nudes" by both .Mic and attn:
• The controversy surrounding her Instagram was mentioned in Harper's Magazine's weekly review for March 15, 2016.
• Sarley's fruit art photographs have been featured on the French television show L'Émission d'Antoine as a background image for an interview.
• The third episode of The Guardian's web series Vagina Dispatches featured Salery's fruit fingering throughout the episode.
• Cosmopolitan named Sarley as one of the Twenty Best Vagina Moments of 2016.
• Artsy magazine named Sarley as one of the Eight Women Who Turned Food into Feminist Art on a list of 20th- and 21st-century artists.
• Calvin Klein has been noted for being heavily influenced by Sarley's work in one of their advertisement series.