Nice To Meet You, Chelsea
"Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it." -- Berthold Brecht
Chelsea Steverson is an art lover. Not the kind that simply buys art, or attends the theatre, or even makes it herself (though she does do all those things). She is a lover of art because she believes that creativity is the key to being human.
Growing up in the small farming town of Blackshear, Georgia came with its own set of challenges. Not only were the arts no where to be found, but the closest anyone came to true creativity was how best to build the "tater gun" (yes that is redneck for Potato Gun) to launch vegetables at the side of a barn.
So how the hell did she end up in Atlanta striving to create a grassroots, multi-disciplinary arts collective? Well, that's a long and tedious story which maybe she'll tell at another time. The long and short of it is, she found that art became a necessity in bettering herself and the world around her.
Chelsea does a little bit of everything when it comes to being creative. She started out as an actor, graduating from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a degree in Media and Performing Arts. Her summers where spent acting for regional Shakespeare companies including the Utah Shakespeare Festival and the Shakespeare Theatre of NJ.
After graduating Chelsea moved to Atlanta thanks to the acting internship program with Actors Express, and she is forever grateful for this opportunity. It brought her to Atlanta, and was the perfect opportunity to better understand Atlanta's thriving theatre and performance community.
After working around Atlanta in multiple acting capacities, Chelsea found that it simply wasn't enough. Not because acting made her unhappy, but because she started to find a passion for the Artist not just simply the art they created. This lead Chelsea back to SCAD in 2014 for her masters degree in Arts Administration.
"I wanted to become an Ambassador for that arts. Someone who was working with artists and encouraging them to look beyond product and embrace the artistic process as a way to better our communities."
Since then Chelsea has worked for multiple non-profit organizations across Atlanta including The Atlanta History Center, Arts for Learning at the Woodruff Arts Center, Actors Express, and the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta. Currently, she works for the local arts service organization, C4 Atlanta, and serves as the Chair of the Ambassador program at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia.
Chelsea is so honored to called Atlanta home, and continues to create for both the visual and theatre arts.
