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Wendy Stevens
Stevens began designing handbags in 1983 “as a process of survival and experimentation” with her art. She had just moved to New York, leaving behind the West Coast and a career in bilingual elementary education. Surrounded by friends making art in all realms, she began exploring her own artistic potential, which she found in the very substance of the city. For some people a subway car is nothing more than a fast way to get from downtown to uptown. For Stevens, it was a source of fascination. She saw sheet metal, telephone booths, elevators, and construction sites everywhere.
“I hunted through endless available materials on Canal Street, in hardware stores, and in the industrial venues of the city” she explains. “Then came the hand tools: punching holes, cutting, sanding sheet metal in my apartment by day and working in a nightclub by night, where I noticed an enormous need for small, durable handbags- just big enough to fit some change, a driver’s license and lipstick” That was the genesis of her first metal handbags.
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