About Rachel Steely and Stephen James
Stephen M. James (Stephen James) and Rachel Steely James live in Indianapolis, Indiana. They have been married since the Feast of Epiphany 2007.
About Stephen
Personal and Intellectual Life
Stephen writes poetry and posts his work online with extended notes for semantic clarification. For biographical influences on his poetry and to read Stephen James’ poetics, visit his poetics / aesthetics statement. Stephen loves to take photographs, read books, travel overseas, and listen to news/political podcasts, college lectures and classic literature.
Stephen updates several websites regularly. Stephen posts tutorials concerning Adobe Flash, web design, and video editing at his media production blog, DesignWell. Stephen listens to hours of podcasts everyday, and you will find his favorite podcasts at CulturedMedia. You can subscribe to all his sites from the SMJdesign Network feed.
Professional Life
Stephen is a media designer with experience in interactive, print and video. Stephen specializes in semantic, standards-based information design and highly interactive web animation. He uses best practices for usability, accessibility, search engine optimization and blogging. Stephen has produced everything from a literary magazine to a corporate web portal, HD video to back-end development. He has a marketing and advertising agency background and currently works full-time at a small advertising agency in Indianapolis, Indiana. Stephen has collaborated with illustrators, printers, writers, and public relations specialists. Stephen loves to learn new things and is passionate about being in a field that changes everyday.
About Rachel
Personal and Intellectual Life
Rachel loves to take photographs, read books, travel overseas, and listen to college lectures and classic literature. Her favorite artist is Caspar David Friedrich, who is a German Romanticist.
Professional Life
Rachel is a professional artist. Rachel was formerly in art education, but has decided to Rachel pursue a more intellectually satisfying vocation. She has chosen oil as her primary medium and enjoys painting on textured surfaces. She works with still life and figurative objects in a theatrically lit setting and presents a shift of time in the paintings through movement or change of the object. She is interested in creating subtle metaphors in paintings that have layers of ideas. You can view her portfolio online and read her artist statements.
Photographs
Captions to photographic collage below (clockwise from upper-left) Stephen and Rachel on their honeymoon on the southern shore of County Kerry, Ireland; an engagement photograph of Stephen and Rachel; Stephen at Taste of Chicago in Grant’s Park; Stephen near Sugar Creek in Indiana; Stephen on the second story of the Ballycarbery ruins near Cahirciveen, Ireland; Stephen taking a photograph of Indian Falls in Jessamine County, Kentucky; Stephen hiking at Shades State Park in Indiana; Stephen at “Ground Zero,” New York City, taking photographs of people taking photographs of “Ground Zero”
You can view photos of Stephen and Rachel James at their Photo Gallery.