Jackson Free Press

Stephanie Lacy is soft spoken and petite. When this single mother and student talks about her daughter--her butterfly--her face lights up with wisdom seldom seen in a 26 year old. Everything about her is soft and nurturing. Her brown eyes are patient as she explains the meaning of her art.

Her art is anything but soft. In one work, "The Breath of God," brightness radiates from the canvas. Soft curving lines and bold colors tell the story of a young mother contemplating a choice.

On picture after picture, I realize that beneath the soft exterior is vision and boldness. Her talent is unmistakable, her story one of growth and survival.

Two years ago, Lacy was pregnant and diagnosed with hypertension and preeclampsia. At 28 weeks into her pregnancy, Lacy suffered a stroke and woke up to 
a daughter.

"I thought I was going to have a little more time to get used to being someone's mother," she says with a chuckle.

She tells me that as a precocious child, she would often walk around her house 
in the dark and try to find her way around, almost as if she was preparing herself 
for something.

Three days after her first stroke, Lacy suffered a second, and this time she was blind. A new mother with a daughter in an incubator, this artist had to rely on others to take the first pictures of her baby.

All I could think was: 'Man I want to paint. I wonder if I could just get a brush and try to paint something,'" Lacy says. She never did, though, and after two and a half months, her sight came back.

With graduation from Jackson State University looming on the horizon, Lacy has started to focus on how she can help bring art to a community at a time when art programs are gone. She believes that it is important for artists to come together and volunteer to bring art to the children, going into the schools and showing the children that they have options.

"True artists have the passion, and there will come a time when we will have to volunteer and do things. If we want to get things going, then we will have to do volunteer workshops." Lacy says.

As vice president of the Jackson State University Art Club, Lacy sees that one 
of the ways to bring art into the community is working on a public mural project. 
The club has plans to paint murals in Jackson between now and May. In the meantime, you can view this Canton artist's work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily from March 11 through April 16 in the M.E. Robinson building at Jackson State University. All student exhibitions are free and open to the public.