Stephanie’s grandfather, his brothers, and her uncle were self-taught upholsterers. They moved to Los Angeles from Mexico in the 1960’s and set up small upholstery shops in custom car upholstery and furniture. She grew up watching her grandfather and uncle free hand patterns on vinyl, create finely crafted leatherwork, and sew seamless stitchwork on heavy-duty machines. Her grandfather would make his grandchildren handmade backpacks with their initials at the beginning of each school year from the leftover upholstery scraps. The family business was hard work and they worked six days a week. Although there was love for the culture and the craft, it was not romanticized and therefore there is very little documentation of the beautiful custom upholstery work they did on a daily basis. The best jobs only exist as memories in her uncle’s mind as well as scars and calluses on his hands from the manual labor.

The lowrider series pays homage to her family’s upholstery business, Chicanx car culture, and labors of love. It honors the work that has gone into creating something that reflect’s a person’s identity, commitment to manifesting a vision, and cultural pride.

This series is ongoing and additional artwork will be coming soon. The elements in these works are hand-carved hand-printed block prints that are digitally composed. The series is printed on fine art paper using archival inks and are printed on demand. The sizes vary from 8 x 10” to 30 x 40” or larger. Pricing for varied sizes is available upon request.