In crafting sculptures that incorporate concepts of weaponry, armor, and the female form, Linda Stein has found new ways to consider issues of power, violence, and protection. Stein studied at the School for Visual Arts before earning a BA from Queens College. She also earned an MA from the Pratt Institute. In 1972 she founded Have Art: Will Travel! Inc (HAWT), a non-profit that offers exhibitions and education on positive, authentic expression of gender and gender fluidity, combatting the sexism often perpetuated by art. She hopes her art will “transform social consciousness” and coined the four B’s—Bully, Bullied, Bystander, and Brave Upstander—as a tool to inspire her viewers to think about these roles within their lives. In 1990 Stein created an artistic series called Blades that used machetes, musical instruments, and other materials. After 9/11 she shifted focus, creating a series called Knights of Protection that involved human forms shaped from metal, wood, leather, and stone, a theme that continued to resurface in her work in series such as The Fluidity of Gender (2007) and I Am the Environment (2006). Other series Stein has developed include collage portraits of female superheroes and of courageous women of the Holocaust. In 2016 she edited Holocaust Heroes: Fierce Females, an 84-page full-color book. The following year she received the Artist of the Year Award from the New York City Art Teachers Association/United Federation of Teachers. In 2022 she won the NYS Assembly Citation for Outstanding Leadership. As of 2023 she is on the Board of Directors for Veteran Feminists of America.