Stevie Scheidemantel is a third-year participant of the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program and lives in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan. She lived in the town of Hamaoka for two years before transferring in July 1999. She now lives in the nearby town of Yoshida and teaches English at Yoshida High School.

Originally from Oklahoma in the United States, Stevie graduated with her M.F.A. in Art and Photography from the University of Oklahoma in 1996, and received her B.F.A. in Art and Photography from Washington University in St. Louis in 1991. She has exhibited her work in the United States and Japan, most recently at the Mikasa Gallery in Shizuoka City in November 1999, and at the 1999 Photo-Session Exhibition at the Shizuoka Prefectural Art Museum.

Stevie, right, with friend Sachiyo, left. July, 1999.

Before coming to Japan, Stevie taught photography for three years as an adjunct professor at Rose State College in Midwest City, Oklahoma. Part of that time, she was also the staff photographer for the Public Relations Office of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. There, she photographed the over-crowded prison conditions, which aided in acquiring new funding from the state legislature to build additional housing facilities for the inmates.

Currently, she is working on a web site of her black and white, large-format photographs of rural Oklahoma, entitled, "Whispering Relics: Photographs and Narratives of Oklahoma's Cultural Landscape." When she returns to the United States later in 2000, she will complete the work for "Whispering Relics" which she plans to publish as a book.