Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr.

Master Artist Michael Bernard Stevenson Jr. is a grandmotherly master artist and engaged community member based in Portland, Oregon. They’re currently re-exploring ancestral food ways and how they might imbue the richness of food culture into their body, mind, and spirit in the present.

If Michael had a birthday full of unbridled joy, they can’t quite recall it. However, they’ve begun to reinvest significance in their birth month by celebrating their birthday belatedly. Last year they did this on Halloween, a harken back to when they did it for the first and only time as a child. These two seem to take the proverbial eyeball cake 👁🎂 (symbolic and significant on both of these birthdays).
Their favorite U.S. state or territory is any territory that cedes its holdings back to the Indigenous people who originally stewarded them.
Michael continues to ponder the nature of existence. Are we individual cells of consciousness in a galactic organism evolving in an attempt to perceive itself? If yes, all moments are this.

Read Michael’s syllabus.
Explore more of their work.