Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Stevens leads artisan executive committee
BELLA VISTA — Artist Stevie Stevens is president of the executive committee of the Artisan Alliance at Wishing Spring and has recently created a large mosaic mural in addition to adding her art to the Wishing Spring Gallery.
She said she had been thinking of becoming part of the Wishing Spring Gallery for a long time due to its focus on arts and crafts. A fulltime mixed media mosaic artisan, Stevens also has art on display at the Ariodante Arts and Crafts Gallery in New Orleans, which she became acquainted with a couple of years ago.
“I was inspired by how they were open to arts and crafts and embraced the spectrum,” she said. “My interest in [Wishing Spring Gallery] is exactly that — that they embrace the full spectrum of what we consider art.”
Stevens learned that the executive committee of the Artisan Alliance needed a president and went through the process of meeting with the committee. She said she has served on several committees and wanted to do more. Now she is heading up the executive committee, which makes all decisions for the Artisan Alliance.
Stevens has also recently been juried in at the gallery, adding her own pieces among the other artwork on display.
“I’m really happy to be juried in as one of the exhibitors at Wishing Spring,” she said.
She said she still makes smaller artworks, some of which will be on display at the gallery, and she is also still pursuing larger mosaic murals by working with municipalities.
Stevens has created two large murals in Bella Vista — “Journey Oz” at the tunnel on the Tweety Bird trailhead on Little Sugar Trail, and “Wheels in Motion” at the Bella Vista Public Library. Another large mural she created called “Frisco Connects” is on a wall at the Rogers Experimental House.
Stevens recently completed a large mosaic mural called “Vera,” which is inspired by Vera Key, who contributed greatly to the Rogers Historical Museum, where the mural will be placed in a Victorian garden, she said. The Benton County Master Gardeners, of which Stevens is a member, designed and installed the Victorian garden, she said.
She said Vera Key lived in the 1800s and was related to the War Eagle family. Key became a nurse and served in World War I, then acted as nurse for a man in Rogers who made her the beneficiary of his estate. When Key died she gave her inheritance partly to the city of Rogers and partly to the Rogers Historical Museum, Stevens said. Key also helped establish the Rogers Garden Club.
The mural features a bouquet and a photo of Key and has Victorian and Art Nouveau themes, Stevens said. It will be installed later in the spring when the flowers in the garden are blooming.
“When I was making it, it made me feel connected to her,” she said.