Michael Stevens aligns the comedic and sinister and the crude and refined in his mixed-media, wood sculpture and reliefs. These works are invested with the artist's attraction to dark comedy and irony, notorious aspects of his personality that, despite disclaimers and protestations, cannot disguise this artist's zest for life. Growing up in the 1950s before the family television set, he was captivated by the dichotomy of seemingly three-dimensional images contained within a flat screen. Telecasts of slapstick cartoons, local children's programming, and somber stories on the evening news delivered both whimsical and meaningful narratives directly into the family living room. The impact of this programming had a profound influence on Stevens from an early age and continues to inform his work today.

Simultaneously serious and satirical, Stevens's work presents ever-fluid juxtapositions of good and evil, innocence and guilt, comedy and horror.

Many of his pieces combine natural branches and twigs, often with wood left raw and bark intact. That which Stevens actually "sculpts" may be either painted or left unfinished. The incongruity between the natural golden sheen of the carved pine and the glossy, enameled surfaces (reminiscent of ventriloquists' dummies and children's toys) brings new tension and variety to the familiar medium.

Stevens also incorporates found objects into his work. His favorite "ready-mades" are found at the thrift-store, where he culls art reproductions of Old Masters and more recent artists to add depth and drama to his sculptures. Subjects included verdant landscapes, picturesque barnyard scenes, decorative still lifes, and stately portraits. Stevens then paints over, cuts into, "pops out," and otherwise commands new ownership of the hackneyed Pictures, elevating to the realm of fine art that which was formerly its antithesis.

These backdrops serve to bring depth to Stevens's pieces and provide his sculpted figures a place to inhabit. In Stevens's wall-mounted pieces, the panels act as theatrical stage sets. Akin to puppet theater, or early television performances acted out before painted scenery, both background and foreground scenes erupt into chaos. Characters painted into the background run out onto the shallow stage of the piece to unite fore and aft with color and imagery. Such spatial artifice became imbedded in the artist's psyche early on and has permeated his work for more than two decades. In Stevens's freestanding work, figures act out equally comic or disturbing activities. Here, the artist relies only on sculptural elements to tell the tale, not upon illusionistic "painted" surfaces.

Stevens's sculptures are never as familiar or charming as they may seem. More often than not, these "innocents" find themselves in compromising situations that heighten the chill implicit in the narrative. His sculptures also seem to express dismay at America's loss of innocence since the 1950s, paralleling his own emergence as an artist and his continually evolving perceptions.

In looking to the past, Stevens leverages youth's inherent uncertainty for the future. Indeed this "coming of age" is a recurrent theme in his work. In endeavoring to trace the human condition, Stevens has turned to a specific moment in time, offering viewers a glimpse of how he as an artist, and by extension American culture, has changed.

(Condensed Version)
Scott A. Shields, Chief Curator,
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California
November 2004

With contributions from Elizabeth Adan and Diana Daniels