Vanessa Vanek is a fiber and digital media artist and an art educator from Lawrence,Kansas. She earned a BFA in Textile Design, a graduate teaching certificate in VisualArt Education from the University of Kansas, and an MAEd in 2022. With...
Read MoreVanessa Vanek is a fiber and digital media artist and an art educator from Lawrence,
Kansas. She earned a BFA in Textile Design, a graduate teaching certificate in Visual
Art Education from the University of Kansas, and an MAEd in 2022. With twenty-three
years of teaching experience in high school and middle school visual art and design,
she has worked across diverse cultural landscapes in the United States, Thailand,
Korea, and East Africa. Navigating these experiences with Spina Bifida and using a
wheelchair, she is now based in Shanghai, teaching high school art and design at an
international school while continuing to create work that explores what it means for her
to live with a disability.
In a world obsessed with perfection, Vanessa uses her life to challenge traditional ideas
about beauty and identity through digital media and fiber art. Living with a disability has
enabled her to address themes of identity, loss, and trauma—and to find the beauty
within those experiences. Through her work, she invites viewers to reconsider notions of
normalcy and to find beauty in the hard, messy parts of life.
