The beloved and involving lessons in front of the façade of the Cathedral of Chartres, given by my professor of art-history Robert Suckale, made clear to me that I had chosen the wrong study-course.
I would have become none other than a mediocre art-historian and that is why I decided to interrupt my courses at the university of Bamberg and to pack my bags, loading all my dreams into a Volkswagen Van…
direction Italy, where I wanted to become a scupltress.
Like every choice made with passion and instinct, I had a hard encounter with reality called “parents”. To dissuade me they blocked every type of financial help. But at 21 years there are no barriers.

Once arrived at Pietrasanta, I quickly found a job … in the early morning I cleaned the pavements of a pizzeria. At lunch I was a waitress in a small boarding-house and in the evening I posed as a model for a Venezuelan sculptress.
With the money that I earned I bought myself a private portion of liberty, a motor-cycle.
I was almost happy, the only thing that was missing was the realisation of the project for which I had undertaken this trip.

That is why I decided to attend the well-known Academy of Fine Arts at Carrara, department of sculpture!
I dedicated myself to learn every technique and secret that beholds this slow and poetic way of expression.
I finished my studies with the maximum of credits together with Patrick, the man who accompanied my artistic progressions and the next 16 years of my life.
With incredibly heavy sculptures we filled exhibitions in Germany from the south to the north and from the west to the east, winning contests to embellish public places, enriching gardens and private houses.
We lived between Italy and Germany and we were a great team working with enthusiasm.
The 21st of June in the year 2000 our son Vincent Fortunat Steiner was born, our best work of art created with four hands.

A completely new phase of my life started, everything changed and not always for the better. My relationship with Patrick lost his magic and also sculpturing, that was bound to us as a couple, did not reflect myself any longer.
Confused moments arrived.
The role of being a mother fulfilled me and at the same time it created a distance from me being myself. I started to take photographs, work at the computer and whilst picking up the threads of my life, I got to know the materials wool, cloth and silk.

The wish for this feminine work was the coherent expression of my daily life… at any hour of the day or of the night I could embroider without having to leave my son. I refound my freedom.
A number of different reasons have led me back from the embroidered pictures and the life size contract work which I have been working on over the last 6 years, to sculptures. I followed an inner need. The most important factor, however, was the stone sculpture which used to stand on the table I normally spread out my material on. I had always thought of the figure as being unfinished, as if it was waiting for something.

Then, last autumn while I was sitting at my table, I picked up a few left over pieces of material and made it a cloak, and from some wool I made a shawl, I then clothed the sculpture in them.
At this point I clearly saw that what had been forming over the last few months and had been becoming ever stronger, had taken shape.
A fusion a mergance of sculpture, material and wool. My earlier work had given rise to entirely new possibilities.

I embroidered in 4 languages a poem about love, about family, about promises and unkept promises, about hope and self-knowledge on the mantle of the woman surrounded by an aureola, DONNA - MA - DONNA, I Myself  represent the woman, the mother, the Madonna ...

I grew up with a very religious mother, fell in love as a child with the depictions of the Madonnas, and 'played' them, imitating them, with long robes and veils.
I condense myself, the journey goes back, goes through the lived, experienced present, always closer to myself, and my art with me. My life has brought me exactly where I want to be and I see myself more than ever as the woman I really am.

All my works are about time, about slowness, about meditation, about spirituality. Stitch after stitch, thoughts about the earth, about hope, consolation, the woman as the great protector, about happiness and love for all mankind, about the world in which we all live together and have to find ways together - are stitched daily, for hours, for months.