Multi-Media Illustrator | Bio | Stephanie Fleischer Osser
Stephanie Osser works from her studio in Needham, Massachusetts. She is a multi-media illustrator, working on paper (often with Adobe Photoshop and Procreate – doing children’s books, cookbooks, flora & fauna) and more recently embedding her illustrations in porcelain and stoneware ceramic objects, both thematic (often on musical themes), and utilitarian (e.g., dinnerware). She is passionate about children, music, and nature. Stephanie is a singer too, as a soloist with the Newton Swing Band, and in the soprano section of the Masterworks Chorale of Boston. She can often be found (next to her husband) making sketches at live concerts, operas, and operettas.
Her clients for illustrations have included the New England Aquarium where she was a staff illustrator and drew hundreds of fish, the New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the Boston Globe. She’s illustrated nonfiction children’s books such as “All About Eggs” and “Drinking Straw Construction,” school textbooks, and Jim Henson’s “Big Book of Muppet Crafts.” Her 8 cookbooks include those authored by Wolfgang Puck and Bernard Clayton, Jr. Her ceramics have found their way into the permanent collections of six museums: the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Museum, the American Museum of Ceramic Arts in Pomona, CA, the International Museum of Dinnerware Designs, Ann Arbor, MI, the Blair Museum of Lithophanes, Elmore, Ohio, the Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp, Belgium, and the Needham Historical Society. Her work has been selected for presentation by juries for dozens of ceramic shows around the US.
Stephanie loves to teach, as well. She managed and taught at the ceramics studio at Babson College in Wellesley for six years, where students from Olin and Wellesley colleges also enroll for clay passionate pursuits. Lately, she teaches classes for young children at the New Art Center in Newton called “Clay Tunes” – inspired by her new role as a grandmother to two granddaughters. She introduces the children to classical music and jazz as they create in clay. Also, she’s doing children’s classes at libraries through a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and with other groups, on making collages from recycled cereal boxes and other usually discarded materials – inspired by the charming children’s books of illustrator Eric Carle.
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