About

SCULPTURE, DRAWING, MAP DRAWING


MFA, The University of Texas at Austin ‘90 BFA, University of Florida, Gainesville ‘86 AA, Santa Fe Community College, Gainesville, ‘84



In 1992, I began working on a mosaic mural project with John Yancey; at the same time, I was workings on map drawings. While working on these two seemingly disparate types of work. I realized that they would allow me to be in bliss, an attractive idea for an African American man. Drawing on maps provided a way of thinking about social and political issues, redacting visual information with my Sharpie marker.

In 2004 I began a sculpture series based on the Illuminati and Masonic initiations, creating sculptural artworks starting at 33 degrees and continuing down to 1 degree. Using my artistic license, I am working my way from 33 degrees to 1 degree, with each sculpture representing the initiation of a degree. Using broken tile mosaics, I have completed my series to the 25th degree.

- Steven Bernard Jones

Are you prepared to scratch your head in wonderment? Step right up into Steven Bernard Jones’ world of radical acceptance and storytelling. Zero to Sixty might feel fast, but as a sixty-year-old artist, he’s just warming up. It’s a journey of rage, turned on its head.

Mr. Jones seeks bliss. He seeks idyll time to doodle, to be free, to be content. He calls this a political statement for a black man in the 21st century. His doodles take over, covering the path we walk, the land we call our own. We seek direction, guidance from maps. His doodles speak louder, giving us the direction we need. They emerge into the physical realm, from the surface of maps to sculptural drawings, to sculptures.

There is no denying that there is plenty to be angry about, but he allows the mind to wander, free of constraints and judgment. Using a cattle marker (a not so subtle reference to chattel slavery…) at times, or a sharpie marker and a teacher’s discarded maps, he reclaims the whistle in his strolling doodle across the vast landscape of America and beyond.

May he guide us all on a righteous path of joy.

Steven Jones is a former department head of sculpture at the University of Florida, Tallahassee. He has art taught for more than twenty years at UT Austin, Huston-Tillotson College, Austin Community College, and Texas State University. He has had residencies in Florida and Haiti and currently resides in Auburn, Alabama.