Today we’d like to introduce you to Stella Chang.
Hi Stella, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I’m a multimedia visual artist based in Jersey City, New Jersey. My work is rooted in painting, mixed media, and installation, and it often explores identity, memory, healing, and the ways we put ourselves back together after life changes us. I was born in San Jose, California, and grew up between the U.S., Taiwan, and Canada, so I’ve always carried pieces of different places with me. Before returning fully to art, I studied at NYU and built a career in fashion accessories, where I learned a lot about color, form, product, and storytelling.
In 2021, I had a sudden and severe onset of lupus that changed everything. My body was in constant pain, and I had to learn how to live with a chronic illness that has no end date. It eventually ended my fashion career, and I found my way back into making art. At first, painting was a way to process what was happening to me, both the physical and emotional pain, but over time, it became a way to rebuild myself. Working with glass, paint, ink, digital elements, and mixed media helped me give shape to things I could not always explain with words.
Today, I see my art as a reflection of both breaking and becoming. I’m grateful that my work has been shown in places like the Newark Arts Festival, Paul Robeson Galleries, NJPAC’s Nico Kitchen + Bar, and IMUR Gallery in Jersey City. I never expected illness to become part of my story, but it helped me find my voice as an artist. I’m still learning, still healing, and still making work that reflects the many pieces of who I am.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, it has not been a smooth road. I don’t think anything in my life has ever felt smooth or simply given to me. When I graduated from college, my family was going through serious financial hardship, and shortly after graduation, we lost our home. I was homeless for about two weeks during a time when I was supposed to be celebrating this big milestone. I had a BFA from NYU, but only design internship experience, and fashion was the first industry willing to take a chance on me. That is how I ended up building a career in fashion accessories. It was not the original dream but serious survival mode.
Years later, lupus changed my life again in a very different way. It took away my health, my sense of identity, my confidence, some relationships, and definitely financial stability. All the boxes I thought I had checked in life suddenly became unchecked overnight. I had worked so hard to build a stable career and a version of myself that felt secure, and then I had to face the reality that my body could no longer keep up with the life I had built.
Both chapters of my life taught me that survival is not always graceful. Sometimes it is messy, painful, and lonely. I had to fight tooth and nail, in very real ways, to not disappear and to keep going. Coming back to art was not just a creative choice. It was what I had left when so much else was stripped away. In many ways, making art became the way I started to rebuild myself again.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
As a multimedia visual artist, my work moves between acrylic and watercolor painting on glass, aluminum, canvas, and paper, eventually developing into more layered and immersive installations. I think I’m known for making work that looks beautiful at first, but carries a much deeper story underneath. A lot of my work comes from illness, memory, trauma, and the question of how we keep going when life throws us into the unknown.
One of my recent solo exhibitions is *A Body, A Garden, A Mind* at NJPAC’s Nico Kitchen + Bar, on view from April 12 to September 14, 2026. That show includes acrylic on canvas and watercolor paintings I made during some of the worst years of my life, when I had lupus but no diagnosis yet, which also meant no treatment. I was living in constant flare-ups, pain, fatigue, and fear, without really knowing what was happening to my body. Each painting became a way to channel that physical decline, steady my mind, and create just enough mental space to make it through another day.
I’m also very proud of *Fractured Reflections*, an interactive installation at IMUR Gallery in Jersey City, on view from May 9 to May 22, 2026, because it shows how my work has expanded from paintings on the wall into community engagement. For this project, funded by the Jersey City Arts Council’s Individual Artist Fellowship, I created 16 sculptural glass portraits using acrylic paint on layers of glass that were broken, painted, and reconstructed. The work asks: where do we go from here when everything that made up who we are has been broken down and stripped away? I then opened the glass forms into blank pages of a glass grimoire, where people can draw, write, and reflect on their own stories. What sets my work apart is that it is not just about my own healing anymore. It creates space for other people to confront their own pain, whether that is illness, trauma, abuse, grief, or something else, and hopefully find a way forward too.
In many ways, this is my way of paying it forward. The Jersey City art community was there for me during one of the worst period in my life, so it only feels right to open up the installation and invite the community to be part of the conversation.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?
I listened to Pema Chödrön’s talks on YouTube a lot, and I found her through Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, who I also discovered on YouTube. I eventually signed up for his Tergar meditation classes, *Joy of Living 1–3*, and now I’m in the Meditation Teacher Program, working toward becoming a meditation teacher myself. Meditation did not make the pain go away, but it helped me build a different relationship with myself, my body, and what I was going through.
I also use imagination as a way to escape physical pain. I binge-read Ilona Andrews’ sci-fi fantasy novels and a lot of Japanese manga. As a history lover, books by Tracy Borman, Alison Weir, and Lucy Worsley have become comfort reads for me, along with their documentaries. I also enjoy Mayim Bialik and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s and podcasts about science, space, and everything in between. Does reruns of Gold Girls count?
Those worlds give my mind somewhere else to go when my body feels trapped. Sometimes fantasy, history, science, and storytelling become their own kind of medicine. The unifying thread is that they all examine the human condition from different perspectives, which helps me make sense of my own reality.
A philosophy I return to often is Japan’s idea of kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold instead of being hidden. That idea has shaped both my life and my art. I don’t believe brokenness means something is over. Sometimes the cracks become part of the story and its history, and sometimes they become the most meaningful part.
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Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.artbystellachang.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artbystellachang/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ModaRevise
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/artbystellachang/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@artbystellachang
- Other: https://longisland.news12.com/spotlight-new-jersey-art-by-stella-chang
