She's More Than a Talent Scout

Last week's numbing cold, high winds, and rain and ice — along with a ceiling leak requiring a very large bucket at 1:00 a.m. and lots of calls through a day — created the perfect conditions for sheltering where the sun didn't shine. A freshly brewed pot of coffee at the ready, the Mac amped, I went looking for New Year "finds". And what I found, after working my way through a web of links, was one of the most original and stunning artists around.

The artist is native Nebraskan and now Minnesota resident Marilyn Stevens. Her art is an alchemical blend of imagery, text, hand-made paper, and textiles. She appropriates and re-uses found or discovered objects (hat and dress forms, metal printer's letter blocks, bookbinding fabrics, for example) to great effect. And what comes out of her multi-layered, highly expressive, and evocative mixes of media shows you just how refined a design aesthetic she has and how wonderful and compelling the unconventional can be. See for yourself here.

Stevens also writes an engaging and beautifully designed blog: Talent Scout: Fresh Finds, Authentic Stories. What you'll find there — what she dubs Art Finds, Book Recommendations, Cool Studio Spaces, Creative Conversations, Interesting Artifacts, and more — will delight, too, for Stevens searches out and uncovers some of the most creative women and men working in the arts and design fields today.

An interesting interview with Stevens is here.

Her professional bio is here.