Lori Hepner is a woman with autism, working primarily in photography, new media performance, and public art in community centered projects. She has spent considerable time over the last five years in community centered artist residencies in two Pittsburgh neighborhoods, in a small Arctic Community in coastal Norway, as well as residencies in Finland, Iceland, and the Canadian Yukon. Lori was featured in the WQED documentary, Visible, featuring five female artists from Pittsburgh, in Spring 2018.

A collaboration with singer Kendra Ross has manifested itself into live performance as Hepner & Ross in Intersection*ology, which has been awarded grants by the Heinz Endowments, the 2018 Carnegie International, and The Opportunity Fund. They have performed in Durban, South Africa, Richmond, Virginia, San Antonio, Texas, and Pittsburgh.

Lori's personal photographic work has been featured in Time Magazine, Wired, and Next Level Magazine and has been exhibited at the Houston Center for Photography, Carnegie Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, in photo festivals in the Netherlands, China, & Spain. One of her Twitter portraits from Status Symbols, as well as her performative photographs from #Crowdsourced Landscapes project, will be sent to live on the moon in 2021 in the mini-museum that is the MoonArk Project.

Hepner holds an MFA in Digital Media from Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA in Fine Art Photography from Rochester Institute of Technology. She is a Professor of Integrative Arts at Penn State University’s Greater Allegheny campus.