Art is everywhere. We live in a world where the word “art” is so universal. You ask someone “What is art” and everyone is going to have some sort of different answer to that question. Music, fashion, movies, pictures, doesn’t matter. To some, one if not all of those are considered some kind of art. Yeah sure art is pretty to look at, listen to, feel, but art can be so much more for a community. 

Meet local Macon artist Kevin “Scene” Lewis, a man who has committed his life to creating just that. Art for the community. Art that opens people’s eyes to the world and makes them ask why.

“I love telling stories with my artwork and everything,” Lewis said. “My goal is to not only make something that’s visually pleasing to look at, but if you can learn something from it if you can pick something up from it, then I feel like that’s a mission accomplished.” 

Lewis grew up in Virginia and just like most kids he was always trying to find his thing, his calling.

“My mother would say I’ve been drawing since I was a baby,” Lewis said.

For him, art was just something that came naturally for him. If his friends were looking for Kevin, he said they could always find him drawing or painting on something somewhere, and sometimes that would get him into a little trouble.

“I would find places to spraypaint wherever I could…I just started writing my name on walls, and that led to me getting into a lot of trouble, but that led to everyone in my neighborhood, my family, everyone knowing that this is what I wanted to do,” he said.

People quickly realized the talent and passion he had for art. People would tell him about how he had all the talent in the world but to ensure he didn’t waste it.

“I had a really cool art teacher named Ms. Stannard, and she got me a scholarship to her alma mater,” Lewis said. “She gave me some extra classes my senior year to get my grades up so I could even be accepted into the school.”

Lewis would graduate from Virginia Commonwealth University with a double major in Illustration and Design. 

He said he would realize how brutal that art world can be. When he finally sold his first painting he felt like he had finally made it, but said he ended up spending all of the money he made on his first sale on things like a dog and other things he said he probably never should’ve purchased.

“I left college with this big ego and a big head thinking I could do this anywhere. I got to Colorado at first, and I was like the hot new thing and when I finally sold a piece I’m like ‘yeah this is easy,'” Lewis said. “It would humble me. I didn’t sell anything. Couldn’t figure it out. I really had to find myself.”

While in Colorado he would find something or more like someone that would help him find himself. Lewis ended up meeting his future wife who was in the Air Force and stationed in Colorado. They would go on to travel the world together before settling down in her hometown which would bring him to middle Georgia to continue his art career. 

“Macon was real welcoming. They gave me all these walls to paint!” Lewis said.

Coming to Macon and finally being paid to do the thing that had gotten him into so much trouble as a kid was when Lewis finally knew that he had made it in the art world.

“I had to call my mom and be like ‘Mom! They’re paying me to paint on walls now!” Lewis said.

He said the way the community brought him in and welcomed him made Macon feel like a real home for him. Lewis has been a big believer in how art is so incredibly important for a community and believes that art should be more than just a pretty picture.

“I love telling stories through my art. I really want to push the viewer to feel something, think something, or even just question like, what was this dude doing? What was he thinking?” Lewis said.

Around 10 years ago, Lewis said he and a group of artists did a big mural that was in an old abandoned parking garage up in Philadelphia in what “was just a rough area.”

The group ended up completing a very large beautiful mural in that lot and years later Lewis was able to come back and visit the site. He was very pleasantly surprised with what he found.

“I came back years later and that lot became a community garden. Going from an empty lot that had all this drug paraphernalia lying around to now this community garden that people are actively taking care of it,” he said. “There was really nothing there but the artwork and that really changed the direction of the needle of how people felt towards the community. I think representation is necessary for the community.” 

To Lewis, knowing the history of your community is so important. A lot of people go about their lives each and every day without knowing the history that once happened right beneath their feet. Lewis hopes to be able to tell people about that history through his art.

For example, John Oliver Killens was an important figure in the Black Arts movement during the Harlem Renaissance who also happened to be born and raised in Macon over in the Pleasant Hill area so when Lewis was asked to do a mural over there, he made sure to incorporate some of that into his work.

“People need to know that greatness comes out of this area,” Lewis said. “Don’t let the bad conditions drag you down. It shows people that if they made it, I can make it.”

Lewis said the moment that he is most proud of from his career so far happened a few years back when he lived in Washington D.C. He was asked to do a live painting during a Jay Dilla performance, a famous rapper and music producer. While he was painting a woman walked up to him and complimented the painting saying she loved the way that he captured him. Turns out that woman was Jay Dilla’s mother and Lewis ended up giving her the piece instead of auctioning it off. Fast forward a little and the National African American History Museum at the Smithsonian was doing an exhibit on Jay Dilla and they wanted Kevin’s painting that he gave to the mother on display.

“This was God telling me you’re on the right path. Keep doing what you’re doing,”  Lewis said.

This was what led to Kevin deciding to turn art from something he just did on the side to something he would make a career out of. 

“The stereotype is you’re not going to make any money until you’re dead…don’t fall for that. This is a lie,” he said. “Art is needed and appreciated by people and if that’s your dream you need to find a way to get it done. And that’s how you know if it’s your calling. You’ll go crazy doing anything else.”

Ultimately nothing in life is ever easy or given to you, and sometimes all it takes is a leap of faith to get that ball of creativity rolling to find your calling.

“The universe does not reward fear,” Lewis said. “Keep producing art, keep putting it out there because if you don’t put it out, no one’s going to see it, and if no one’s able to see it you’re not going to be able to live off of it.”

For Lewis, reaching your goals and dreams is something he hopes everyone can achieve.

“I’m the biggest cheerleader of obtaining your goals and dreams. I don’t care what it is,” he said “If that’s what you want and you aren’t hurting anyone else, go for it. Jump off and go for it. You’re never going to learn how to swim if you never jump into the water.” 

 Today, Lewis has become way more successful than he could have ever dreamed, and the irony in it all? The walls he once would have the cops called on him for painting are now the same walls that people pay him a pretty penny to paint on. A man who can tell stories through some paint and a wall. Remember the name, Kevin “Scene” Lewis.

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