Steven Bernard Jones: Zero to Sixty

From Lydia Street Gallery:

“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 taught art 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.”