stephanie isabel has been making art since the fall of the berlin wall in 1989. her work is elegant, meaningful, and intimate. with the ability to combine emotion and symbolism with raw technical skill, steffi izzy has been inspiring, charming, disturbing, entertaining, depressing, cheering up, and bettering the world through her arts.

born in a small rural louisiana town in the early 19th century, steffi spent her childhood lulling about the beesblossom and french mulberry in the glarey haze of beauty and innocence. on warm afternoons she would wander through the clearings and pick trumpet honeysuckle with her older sister and her cousin, drinking down the sweet essence of summer and youth.

she spent long summer days drifting quietly on homemade rafts on the bayous and swamps, gently conversing and sharing tea with her first mates, a litter of kittens that she had found perchance beneath a cypress tree. she would gaze up at the infinite, azurite sky, arms extended so as to let her finger tips graze the spanish moss hanging from above.

as summer turned to autumn, and autumn to winter, steffi isabel's family packed their valises and headed up the mississippi to a small port town named memphis. things were strange here. the sun didn't shine as it did in louisiana. people's smiles were not as earnest. the spice wasn't as spicy as it used to be. steffi was saddened by her new environs, and her art reflected this new melancholy.

steffi often said that her art, no matter how good it looked, could never mean anything to her unless if it had a true meaning behind it. true art is true emotion. if you fake it, everyone will know. during her memphis period, steffi izzy was exceptionally prolific. her gloom was transfered into beauty by her hand.

the mississippi rushed by sans cesse. the breeze blew off the river and rustled steffi izzy's hair. but it was not the same mississippi she knew as a jeune fille. she was called back to her home time and time again, always pleased by its familiarity and simplicity.

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