Melanie Stevens Bio

Melanie Stevens was born in 1979 in Miami, Florida, and raised in Atlanta, GA.

In 1993, she began her artistic studies at Cedar Grove High School where she studied Basic and Advanced Painting and Drawing, as well as Independent Study Visual Arts for four years. She minored in the Governors' Honors Fine Arts Program at Valdosta State University in 1996 and graduated from Cedar Grove High School at the top of her class in 1997. She took several drawing and painting courses at Yale University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 2001.

Melanie Stevens has received a number of awards and acknowledgements. In 1996, she won the regional logo and design competition for the DeKalb County Foreign Language Magnet Program as well as the featured Artist of the Month spotlight exhibit at Cedar Grove. Most recently, Melanie has been commissioned to complete works for several private collections and has participated in a number of group art exhibits. Her work has been shown at galleries such as Fine Line Art, MINT and Defoor Centre, as well as the Atlanta-Fulton County Library. Currently, some of her work can be viewed on the national television program, College Hill: Atlanta, on the BET Network and she is a member of the Atlanta-based A-AFTA (African-Americans For the Arts) Organization..

Melanie's work is strongly influenced by the modern traditions of Cubism and Surrealism and strives to explore and evoke themes of femininity, sensuality, passion, depression, spirituality and redemption. She is particularly interested in duality of humanity...the inner perception of self versus the outer perception of reality.