Steven Campbell

Steven Campbell (b. 1956) grew up in Cupertino, CA, a suburb of San Jose. His natural obsession with art began early in life. As a child, he spent many hours painting and drawing with his father, who was his earliest art influence. In young adulthood, Campbell took his first lithography class at a local community college, where he studied under an irascible soul named Sal Peccararo, who learned printing in the old 1950s style, which dictated hot etches and a certain panic among the students. This hot and fast introduction to printmaking grew into a slow and burning love affair between Campbell and print publishing when instructor Martin Levine took over for Peccararo. Levine introduced Campbell to a wealth of information from Cal State Hayward, including materials from Kenji Nanao, a Tamarind Institute master printer and Campbell’s soon-to-be mentor. Shortly after his meeting with Levine, Campbell left his community college to attend Cal State Hayward to pursue the craft of printmaking.

At Cal State Hayward, Campbell met Bay Area greats, such as Ray Saunders, Mich Kohn, Mel Ramos, and Nathan Oliviera. Seemingly overnight, Campbell went from a fledgling printmaker to an emerging print publishing professional rubbing elbows with the leading artistic voices of his generation—“It was a total immersion and demanded long hours,” recalls Campbell.

After graduating from Hayward, Campbell moved to Chicago to attend the Art Institute for his MFA. Two short years for an MFA quickly became a 20-plus year stint when Campbell landed a job as a printer at Landfall Press, where he collaborated with some of the nation’s top artists and worked with the best in the business. When Landfall Press relocated to New Mexico, Campbell followed. He has been in New Mexico ever since, helping artists realize their vision, quietly working on his studio practice, and most recently, teaching lithography at Santa Fe Community College. Campbell views his practice, and to a greater extent life, as a classroom. There is always something to learn and the best way to learn is to play. “Being in the arts is a lot like the old adage of being a shark—stop swimming and you die,” Steven Campbell.