I have incredibly talented friends. Stephanie Darling is no different.  As a local artist of Frazier Park, right here in California,  her story and art has always captivated me.  She was born and raised in the area, not only that she has so much incredible family history to the place, to the land, to the community. It is embedded in her bones and ever apparent in her art work.  Her story, her art, has always fascinated me because it is so different than my own.

I’m first generation on my moms side, and second generation on my father’s.  We don’t have deep roots in this country, let alone one place.  The fact that Steph can trace her family back not only in geneolgy, but geology, in land. NOW THAT IS FREAKING COOL. It is such a beautiful symbiosis between human history and the land, both taking care of one another.

Her paintings are so personal to herself, and this land that as an onlooker you want to know more.  And despite the locality of the work they’re incredibly universal to female expression and embodiment.  I’m a totally obsessed fan girl.

I contacted her last year to see if she wanted to take some of her work and project them around town and I’d photograph the experience.  We thought it’d be an amazingly fun way for us to create something during the colder months as well as try to see how her works transform and adapt presented in another setting.  We thought onlookers would be interested (We were wrong), but we were totally in love with how much they changed depending on the location.

Here are some of the images below.

 

 

You can find more about the amazing Stephanie Darling over at her website at http://stephdarling.org/Tattoos.html 

She’s an amazing tattoo artist as well (may be biased, as I have lots of work done by her).

Looking at these pictures, it would be fun to retake them as the land has changed drastically.  The community pond at the park no longer has water in it, the reeds are low and brittle.  The building is now grey instead of pink and as we enter into spring, the oak trees will be filled with leaves, which will give better surface area to project the pictures onto.

That’s what I love about this process, we can always revisit.