Nelson Stevens: Color Rapping

Springfield Museums, Springfield, MA • springfieldmuseums.org • Through September 3, 2023

Color Rapping, curated by Kiara Hill, celebrates Nelson Stevens’ fifty year career. The renowned artist, educator, and former Springfield resident influenced the art community as an early member of AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists). In his abstract expressionist works, he became a central figure in the Black Arts and Black Power movements while documenting the Black experience. In the early 1970s Stevens initiated a public art project in Springfield that made art accessible for those without access to museums. In over thirty murals throughout the city, Stevens’ promoted Black empowerment and gave way to a new movement which he dubbed Afro Kinetic Expressionism, a style that uses collage techniques to create images which give his works an almost three dimensional quality.

His figures, modeled after family and members of the community, replicate a stained glass that has been shattered, and then pieced back together. Enlisting geometric fragments, Stevens works breathe. His kaleidoscope compositions are represented in Heroic 1 and Spirit Sister. Over the years, Stevens immortalized figures such as Malcolm X, Stevie Wonder, Muhammad Ali, and Bob Marley. The artist, who passed in July 2022, used spray paint, colored pencils, airbrush techniques, and crayons to fashion this style he dubbed ‘color rapping.’

Stevens’ time in Springfield coincided with his tenure at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he spent three decades teaching. One class was rooted in history and the other in figure drawing. Clyde Santan, a former student of Stevens, co-created The Wall of Black Music, a mural in Springfield. The piece, along with Tribute to Black Women, were recently recreated by Common Wealth Murals in honor of the late artist and were unveiled in October 2022.

In his early years, Stevens supported himself by painting murals in nightclubs in Utica, NY, where he would eat for free. Later, he taught at The Karamu House in Cleveland OH, the oldest Black producing theater in the country where his works are on permanent collection, as well as Kent State University, where the artist attended graduate school. Additional works are found in the permanent collections at The Smithsonian, Fisk University, The Chicago Institute of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. — Jennifer Mancuso