Stephanie Mota is a born and raised Bronx artist. She is a recent graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, and uses her Fine Arts degree as a tool in her visual outputs. Her academic training serves only as a technical foundation, and not as the source for inspiration. Her perspective as a first generation Latina, growing up in the Bronx, serves as her true inspiration. Stephanie inherited from her parents an awareness of the Dominican culture, but growing up in the Bronx it became a case of nature versus nurture. It became inherent for Stephanie to understand that her perspective was not solely based on her nurtured culture, that of her parents, but also that her urban setting was part of the “nature” effect on her development. She came to realize that she viewed the world as an American Latina, rather than a Latin-American. The blends of cultures both the urban inner city culture of the Bronx and that of the inherited culture of the Dominican Republic is reflected and analyzed greatly throughout her art, no matter the medium.