So Much Stewart - Indepth Interview and Life Story with Stewart Wilson!

An innovator, philosopher, and creative all his life, Stewart Wilson would do many things before he ever created the Personas or Personaland. He’s been all over: hails from Connecticut but born in North Carolina, and found himself moving around a lot as a kid. He moved to Florida, first at Coco Beach, then Fort Lauderdale, where he got used to the feeling the sand in between his toes, hot sun, and low adult supervision.

“I remember only wearing shoes to go to school! I grew up kinda wild. Nobody really was around to tell me what to do… No adults.”

Even as a child Stewart was very rambunctious and carefree. He recalls a devilish bout with rheumatic fever in his formative years that he believes contributed to his carefree nature.

“When they said ‘you can start walking again’, ‘you can start running again’, it felt like coming out of a cage after so long… that also was, I think, very motivating.”

Stewart noted he always had a fascination for, and gravitated towards art. He was a quiet studious kid, got the grades so his parents would leave him be, but he would always make sure to create in his spare time. It would be sometime before Stewart would engage with that part of himself fully however- for fear of disappointing his parents.

“I always wanted to be an artist, but my mom was always interested in being a ‘professional’, y’know. ‘Be a doctor’. But I went to design school, so I could be an ‘architect’.” He found that while learning design, he learned to make the art process streamlined and practical.

“The crazier idea? The better. Never edit those ideas. Something that sounds totally ridiculous, you gotta write all that down. But your first ideas will be garbage. You gotta take that first idea, and jump, and jump, and jump… Flesh them out. Beta test those prototypes- refine it, and then do it again.”

For a time Stewart convinced himself he might’ve been happier doing something else. Or at least successfully convinced his parents he was onboard with their idea of a future for him.

He found the rigor of design school to be something he would take with him. At the end of two years, he realized he didn’t want to be making structures for people.

“I was more interested in the people. I was more interested in the architecture of the human, not putting them into the space.”

Before he would ever be a student of the brush, he considered being a student of law, even of medicine. But eventually his artistic drive could no longer escape him. He didn’t go in initially as an art student, entering North Carolina Chapel Hill as a ‘pre-med’ student, before an incident with a frog led him to realize where he truly belonged.

“When I was dissecting this frog, I sorta having the frog talk back to me, doing all this kinda funny things, and then looked around and thought… Y’know, I don’t belong here.”

And so he pursued his art. In the art school he met phenomenal mentors, real artists who dedicated themselves to the craft. Though this seemed unique to them and Stewart, who bought an apartment 5 minutes away to be able to work on his prints all night.

“I was a very impulsive artist. Lot of energy, then done! Do it in five minutes, do it in 10 minutes. Whereas with print-making, it takes you days! I wanted to put a discipline on myself. I could maybe do a stone litho, but it would take time for the stone to be ready to print, and days to finish.”

He had moved from North Carolina to New York, seeking work as an artist out in the Big Apple, living below canal street and doing odd jobs to make money. He would come to have an epiphany one day, while working in his Uncle’s basement, finding a new direction to take his art.

“It came to me. I sort of needed to refashion who I was. It just came to me, I needed to make these little figures of humans… I didn’t know why I was making them. But it was okay. It felt right. Was it art? No, I didn’t think it was art, it was like therapy. I was rebuilding myself with these figures… what I was doing, was reconnecting with my intuition.”

Stewart Wilson responded to this artistic inclination within to divest himself from the traditional medium of art and take to uniquely made sculptures.

He finds that the Personas (the sculptures) have life of their own, and not only that, have breathed that essence of life back unto him. A physical amalgamation of the artist’s pure and innocent childhood connection with nature, that spry, young mind that was ripe with creativity and unburdened by the ideas of classical structure and snobby intellectualism that often pervades contemporary art spaces.

He started small, going to shops and offering up sculptures for sale.

“I saw them on the display case… but they looked kind of dead. I said you know what? I should put them in a box. Put a picture of them. I started numbering them, signing them…”

The original Persona launch consisted of 25 figurines, from that, a business was born.

Stewart wanted to create something kinder, or as he puts it, the Personas allowed him to create them, and he is only the keeper that ensures they stay true to form. Beings that symbolize the parts of Stewart he wishes to share with the world, creatures carved from imagination and culture, who’s only interest is to cultivate peace and community across the land.

Stewart became a trendsetter. Though not the first to bridge the gap between the world wide web and community, his intrinsic artisan nature brought him to the apex of his potential, awakening within him an incredible desire to share the stories of the Personas, serving as their medium through which they navigate our little world. But they have their own world too, not only in Stewart’s mind or on his print page, but on the internet. Utilizing the innovative technology of website hosting and internet code, in the late 2000s Stewart would cobble together Personaland with the help of the talented Kwame Antwi. Over 31,000 sculptures have been created of the Personas, to be celebrated and enjoyed the world over.

Stewarts unique brand of creation gives the Personas a real feeling, tangible aesthetic, inspired by the cultures of the world and an amalgam of hopes, dreams fully realized.