Joe Stephenson – Community Murals

After earning a BA in Industrial Design from Michigan State University, Joe has worked extensively as a Muralist, Graphic & Scenic Artist in Jamaica, West Indies, New York, N.Y., Los Angeles & Berkeley, CA. After relocating to Albuquerque in 1987, he has worked with La Compania de Teatro de Albuquerque, Working Classroom Inc., The Vortex, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Civic Light Opera Association (now Musical Theatre Southwest), Albuquerque Little Theatre, Teatro Nuevo Mexico, Opera Southwest, and was on the Performing Arts staff of the National Hispanic Cultural Center 2005 until 2018.
In the 1980s in NYC, he was a mural artist with Cityarts Workshop Inc., the Arts Connection and Operation Greenthumb. Working with youth in schools, Settlement houses, and community gardens in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan.
In 1983 he was a co-founder of Artmakers Inc., a multi ethnic muralist collective in SoHo, which produced the “La Lucha Continua” series of murals in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, among other projects.
In the 1990s under the New Mexico Arts Division Artists-in-Residence program he painted murals in several NM rural and urban locations. In 1992 “Health Care is a Right, not a Privilege” at Cesar Chavez and Broadway Blvd in Albuquerque, grew into today’s Working Classroom Inc. summer mural program.
In 2009 he taught “The Community Mural Process” class for the UNM School of Fine Arts. “The Heart of the Arts / El Corazon de las Artes” is in Popejoy Hall.
In 2014 and 15 with Working Classroom and the Bernalillo County Arts Board he produced “The Flow of the Valley / La Corriente del Valle” at 4022 Isleta Blvd SW in Rio Bravo Park near the South Valley Library.