1999

1st Place recipient

Michael Stevens

My work has always reflected my influences, beginning with my childhood, during which I spent many hours at kiddie matinees and in front of that new thing that entered the neighborhood, the television set. These images left me with marked impressions that last to this day. The visual theater of characters from these sources —the movie and TV heroes, villains, and sidekicks—has enhanced my artistic dialogue and intensified my personal imagery.

My work traces the human condition: the predicament we all share living in these bodies that we call home. The work becomes theater, storytelling devices that push the psychological differences between “good” and “evil,” “guilty” and “innocent,” “serious” and “satirical.”