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Stephanie Dione Howard was born in Greenville, SC. She graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2004 with a B.F.A. in painting. Her work is influenced by outsider artists such as Henry Darger, Adolph Wolfli, Howard Finster and the mixed media collages of her grandfather, Rev. Oliver Howard, a retired Church of God preacher from Georgetown, S.C. "The South.The South is my lifeblood, my "wiseblood," and my home; the stories are my myths and legends, the scenery sets my religion. In my work I try to convey themes of southern culture as honestly and sincerely as I can. If I dig through the red clay of a story and find blood in the ground, it must go in the picture. I thrive on the battlefield that is now a peach orchard, bootleggers in the Indian burial ground, and small children singing church hymns with a lowcountry drawl. I create stories in my work, with themes that mix together a highly potent dose of southern fiction and reality. It is Baptist, voodoo, Shakespeare,rnrnAppalachia, beauty queen and cottonmouth. I present something that contains the amalgamation of magic and faith that has been thrown together in Southern culture. I try to capture a bit of this, and show it to you. Show you what it is capable of, what it can tell you. I want to nurture the aura of the South as an artist, before it dies in the hands of American homogenization."rn—Stephanie Howard
