Michelle Stevens (b. 1997) is a born-and-raised Massachusetts Artist and Illustrator, holding a BFA and a minor in Sustainability from MassArt.

She was an Artist-in-Residence at the Cannery Arts Centre in Esperance / Kepa Kurl, Western Australia, and received a Scholarship to attend an MassArt Alumni Retreat at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Michelle will be a resident at Vermont Studio Center in 2027. Her work has been exhibited at Boston Center for the Arts, 82 Parris in Portland, Maine, Fitchburg Art Museum, and Clark University, among others. She received the Roddy Drawing Prize at ConcordArt, is the Visual Arts Lead at Boston Center for the Arts, and she teaches adult drawing workshops at the MFA Boston and Cambridge Center for Adult Education.

Previously, she has been commissioned to create artwork for Re:SET Music Festival, Boston Calling Music Festival, the Canadian National Railway, Boston Art Review Magazine, and musician San Holo with his record label Bitbird. This past year, she illustrated her first independent children’s book for an author of a story about sustainable tourism, and painted the film poster for Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s “The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire”.

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Project Statement

Primarily influenced by connectivity, documentation, and sustainability, Michelle’s work centers around themes of deep care and curiosity that span time – for past, present and future life. Humans are story-driven creatures, and our interpretations of the stories we tell can both impede or encourage our connectivity with the natural planet, and each other. Her illustration background often leads each work to have its own individual world built around it. Michelle’s work often touches upon the unevenly recognized responsibility for humans to tend to the earth, and feelings of ownership of nature – both urges to take and feelings of wonder. Subjects in her artwork always maintain a sense of hope and curiosity through relatively mystical scenes, exploring layers of perception and the human condition. Most recently, her work has been especially responsive to seasons and the general zeitgeist. During a time where alternate realities can so easily be validated, her work is surreal representational to convey striking a balance when it comes to the importance of reflecting on our inner and outer worlds.