Fri 6/4 @ 5-9PM
When Stephen Bivens died last June at the age of 52 (not of COVID), Cleveland lost a beloved community member, a gifted photographer and an inspiring educator. He wasn’t just a great talent, but a beloved presence, someone who brought warmth and an expansive friendliness to gallery openings and to the Collinwood community he was part of. In his work, he captured the community and its people, and he shared his gifts with young people through his teaching at the Cleveland Print Room.
As his obituary said, “Uniting his diverse and prolific output was a propulsive desire to challenge people to think about their perceptions of others. Stephen sought to capture a range of people — from local artists and political figures to international pop culture heroes to everyday people — in their most natural states and environments. In this way, Stephen sought to show that ‘people are people’ and that human commonality is to be uplifted, and difference, celebrated.”
As a mid-career artist who had only devoted himself fully to photography for 12 years, he was just starting to expand his reputation. And, thanks to the work of friends, local arts promoters and especially his wife Jennifer Madden Bivens, it seems likely his reputation will continue to grow even if his body of work is now finite.
The Maria Neil Art Project, headed by collectors Adam Tully and John Farina, is presenting a retrospective of Bivens’ work on the first anniversary of his death, called Stephen Bivens: A Photographer for the People. The show will be divided between two venues less than a block apart in the Waterloo Arts District: Six Shooter Coffee and the new Maria Neil gallery upstairs from Photocentric in the former Gold Building on the northwest corner of Waterloo and East 156th. It officially debuts Friday June 4 @ 5-9pm during Walk All over Waterloo and will be on view through Sunday August 15.
“This exhibition will mark the kick off of an effort to not only preserve Bivens’ legacy, but raise funds for a scholarship in his name at the Cleveland Print Room. artBIV will showcase Stephen’s work all around the city,” they say. Already the Cleveland Print Room has put out a call for applications for a Stephen Bivens residency there
The show can be seen at MNAP by appointment; email info@marianeilartproject.org . Six Shooter Coffee is open daily from 7am-7pm.