Steve Prince
Steve Prince is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and currently resides in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the Director of Engagement and Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Muscarelle Museum at William and Mary University.
Prince received his BFA from Xavier University of Louisiana and his MFA in Printmaking and Sculpture from Michigan State University. Prince is a mixed media artist, master printmaker, lecturer, educator and art evangelist. He has taught for more than 25 years and conducted workshops internationally in various media.
Prince’s work is philosophically rooted in the cathartic nature of the Jazz Funerary tradition of New Orleans. The Dirge is synonymous with the issues we grapple with daily on a micro and macro level, whereas the Second Line points to the future societal structure built on truth, equity and love that we are collectively moving towards while we are still alive. Prince has created several public works including an 8’ x 8’ mixed media work titled Lemonade: A Picture of America at William and Mary commemorating the first three African American resident students in 1967 at the university, nine banners commemorating the nine people slain at Mother Emanuel AME Church in 2015 as part of Hannibal Lokumbe’s work titled Crucifixion Resurrection: Nine Souls a Traveling, and a 4’ x 4’ x 10’ bronze and stainless steel sculpture titled Sankofa Seed.
Prince received the 2010 Teacher of the Year for the City of Hampton, was a 2020 recipient of a VMFA (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts) Grant, and won the 2020 Grand Prize Visual Art Winner of the Engage Art Competition. Prince has shown his art internationally in various solo, group and juried exhibitions.
Artist Impact Statement
To grapple with the history and atrocities that have affected the African American community and conversely the global society is mentally, physically, and spiritually taxing. Peeling back the layers of pain that have affected generations and generations to come wrenches one's heart to the point of breaking. The arts have historically paved a path back like the Sankofa bird while helping us to move forward and the arts have been utilized as a balm to promote healing because artists activate all of our senses to see, smell, taste, hear, imagine, and feel what is oft times buried and unrecognizable. I believe that the artist's societal role is "truth-sayer," urging us to see, and see deeper. My role in the "Jonah People" production is to create a phantasmagoric representation of the atrocities that have affected the Black community from the onset of chattel slavery to the prison industrial complex. But my image paints a picture of how we made a way, out of no way in spite of the forces and principalities that attempted to eradicate us from the planet; we are still here!
“Mothership Sequel” sketch by Steve Prince
The original featured in The Jonah People is acrylics on canvas painting is entitled, “Mothership Sequel” and measures 12’ x 25’.