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Sometimes a job is just a job. You dig ditches. You sell stocks. Sometimes, though, a job is more than just a living. Some jobs go beyond a career or even a calling. There are jobs that speak to everything you care about. They embody the essence of who you are. Jobs like that are the physical, emotional and spiritual manifestation of your deepest, most authentic self. Mark Stevenson is lucky enough to have that kind of job. He’s a paper conservator in private practice, serving fancy museums, corporations and private collectors. That means Stevenson specializes in the preservation and restoration of drawings, historical documents, maps and posters. That, though, is merely a mechanical description of his work. What Stevenson really does, at heart, is care for things that are beautiful, delicate, valuable—things that should have been treated more kindly. He does this because he is beautiful, delicate, valuable and someone who should have been treated more kindly. Stevenson is slight and lithe. He has large, kind eyes framed by a gray beard and ponytail. We talked on a brisk afternoon in his Valentine home, in a warm, inviting living room. Stacks of vinyl sat by the stereo on the hardwood floor. Walls brimmed with eclectic, indigenous art in mostly muted tones. Trina, a bright green finch, fluttered freely outside of her cage. Our conversation started with trauma. Growing up on a farm in central Indiana, Stevenson—who identifies as biracial, including Native American branches—always felt himself an outsider. “I describe it as marginalized people mixing on the margins: A whole lot of mixed people who find other mixed people and then deny their heritage,” he says, laughing ruefully. His childhood and adolescence were, in many ways, brutal. His family wasn’t poor, he says. Dad
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I realized that we all have this compass inside of us. You set the needle on goodness and walk in that direction.
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owned the local drug store and soda fountain, but Mom’s side had loads of dysfunction. He spoke of substance abuse and questions about the legitimacy of his birth—and even the unsolved murder of a great uncle. “We don't know what happened, but it still echoes in the family,” he says. He also mentioned an abusive football coach and pedophilic scout leader. “I had so much trauma by the time I hit my teen years. It was just, like, off the rails.” Art was a sanctuary. He began to draw before he could speak. As a teenager, he would huddle in his bedroom, teaching himself to copy the style of underground cartoonists like Skip Williamson and R. Crumb. Working with clay was another infatuation, and he went to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale intending to study monumental ceramics. Soon, though, Stevenson discovered the medium that would define his life. One night, he says, he stepped into an etching studio, “and it was just like, ‘Oh, my God, this is it. I love paper.” He spoke kindly, reverentially, like a man describing his oldest friend. “I mean, the colors of paper, the softness of the tones, the rustle of the sheets, it just touched me,” he says. “It was like a tuning fork.” He thought, “This is what resonates with me. This is what I love.” Even after graduation, though, his path wasn’t quite clear. Everything changed,
