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Nelson Stevens, an artist and educator, is remembered for rhythmic compositions that celebrate Black life. Stevens was born in Brooklyn, New York and earned a BFA in painting and art education from Ohio University as well as an MFA in printmaking and art history from Kent State University. In 1969, he joined the important collective called AfriCOBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), a group of artists invested in creating proud, positive, and vibrant images of African American people and culture. From 1972 through 2003, Stevens taught in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and for much of that time he lived in Springfield. Throughout his career, Stevens used art to uplift his community and promote social justice. In the early 1970s, he initiated an important public art project that resulted in the creation of over 30 murals throughout the city of Springfield, Massachusetts. In the 1990s, Stevens founded Spirit Wood Productions and managed the publication of Art in the Service of the Lord: Black Christian Fine Arts Calendars. After retiring from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2003, Stevens moved to Maryland, where he lived until his death in July 2022.
Nelson Stevens’ works are found in many private collections and public museums including the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Art at the Springfield Museums, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. His legacy lives on through his work and the work of his students.
Oletha DeVane is an accomplished multidisciplinary artist who explores diverse political, social identities and cultural interpretations. Her work is in permanent museum collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum while she has exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Museum of the Bible in NY, and Museum of the Americas in Washington DC, to name a few. She recently finished a public art work for Baltimore’s Lexington Market in collaboration with her son, Christopher Kojzar, also an artist. In 2022, she unveiled “The Memorial to Those Enslaved and Freed” at McDonogh School and had a solo exhibition curated by Dr. Lowery S. Sims at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture entitled “Spectrum of Light and Spirit”. She collaborated with artist Nelson Stevens while a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Their collaborative mural projects explored their interests in a community-based art practice drawing on spiritual, political, and historical references. DeVane’s mural “Emergence” was a texturally vivid and colorful abstraction of two faces in the shape of a butterfly.
The Community Mural Institute combines online and in-person instruction, experiential learning, and professional mentorship so that participating artists learn to independently create and install exceptional community-engaged polytab murals. The Institute is designed and run by GoodSpace Murals and Common Wealth Murals.