Born in 1931, in Washington, DC, Phyllis Anna Bayley Whiting Stevens spent her earliest years on a cradle-board in the fields of Arkansas and in a basket on the deck of a houseboat on the Mississippi where her parents found refuge from the big cities during the Depression. Following those years, her family returned to Chicago where her parents had originally met in art school. Thereafter, most of her childhood was spent growing up in Detroit.
Her father served during WWI and returned “shell-shocked.” He became involved with a contingent of the Bonus Army that marched to Washington DC. demanding better benefits for veterans. He was later institutionalized. As a consequence, Phyllis was raised a family household of strong women: her mother, aunt and grandmother.
On Saturdays her mother took her to the Detroit Institute of the Arts where she learned every corner of the museum by heart. She loved the Diego Rivera murals, and regularly visited some of her favorite artists, El Greco, Rembrandt and Sheeler. Her family encouraged her in all artistic endeavors.
While an art student at Antioch College, she produced puppet shows and performed in modern dance productions. At Antioch, she met and was briefly married to fellow art student, Herbert Fisher. They travelled westward, living the life of Bohemians, and later made a home in the Los Angeles area. In the mid-1950s, Phyllis moved to New York City with her infant daughter and settled in the Village. There she pursued her creative dreams, performing shadow puppet productions for CBS TV Network, as well as designing stage sets and lighting for Off Broadway theaters. Her knowledge of lighting and colored films used in theater productions inspired her to work with plexiglass to create artworks that responded to changes in natural lighting. Her plexiglass pieces can be hung in front of windows or can be backlit. To help support herself and her daughter, Phyllis worked professionally as a free-lance art director and graphic designer for New York publishing houses and advertising agencies.
A life-long learner, she took classes at the Art Students League and the Academy of Realist Art, she travelled the world though she kept returning to the high desert of New Mexico. She was very active with the Salmagundi Club.
Phyllis mingled with other artists and creative thinkers in the Village, and later purchased a brownstone in the East Village that had been renovated for artists with ateliers on each floor. She painted in her atelier on the top floor under a large skylight. Not long after September 11, 2001, she moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to be near her daughter and family. In Chapel Hill she continued to paint in her new home studio and outdoors “en plein air.” During this time she returned to weaving tapestries, creating landscapes of her beloved Southwest and the natural world around her. Her work spans her lifetime of just short of nine decades.
Please see Phyllis Stevens’ resume for publications, exhibitions and detailed information.
