Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 30, 1990 TAG: 9004300036
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ALTON, ILL. LENGTH: Medium
He also has great acuity of vision - 20-17 to be exact - which enables him to paint tiny portraits on grains of rice, watch faces and the heads of pins.
His miniature portrait of St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith on a grain of rice is enshrined in the St. Louis Baseball Hall of Fame.
Now his attention has turned to bigger things: portraits of Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog on baseballs.
"Herzog has a banquet coming up at the end of May. I have to do seven dozen portraits in seven weeks," he said, dipping a tiny brush into a palette.
The Alton artist painted 100 baseballs with Herzog's likeness for the manager last year. Herzog auctioned them off to benefit the YMCA.
A baseball card serves as Stevens' inspiration as he creates his art on a TV tray in his living room. It takes Stevens about one hour to paint Herzog's portrait on a regulation baseball.
"I do it over and over so they're not identical, but I want them as close as possible," he says.
Stevens collects $25 per portrait, not including the cost of the ball.
He doesn't limit his subjects to baseball players or baseballs. His favorite effort: a grinning Mickey Mouse on the head of a straight pin.
"I've done portraits on old lockets and inside pocket watch covers," he said. "Once I took the crystal out and painted a player in the batting stance on the face of a watch. I made the bat on the big hand and the ball with all the stitchings on the end of the small hand," he said.
Stevens' smallest painting is a skull and crossbones on the tip of a paper clip for a motorcycle rider.
"I read the smallest painting in the world is on the head of a pin, so I used the paper clip. The wire tip is as small as a shaft of the pin," the artist said.
Most of his ideas come from customers who want, for example, a portrait of an anniversary couple on rice or a color drawing of a favorite car encased on a belt buckle, Stevens said.
Stevens began creating miniature art six years ago out of boredom.
"It was one of those weekends in August when nothing was on TV and I had been asleep on the couch," he said. "I painted a scene on a stone the size of a quarter and it snowballed after that."
by CNB