Payson R. Stevens has had two parallel tracks in his professional career. One has been in the field of science/science communication; the other in art and design. He was President and Creative Director of InterNetwork Inc. (1979-99) and well as InterNetwork Media Inc. (1993-2004), both award-winning science/consulting groups with clients in government, industry, and academia. Originally trained in molecular biology at the City University of New York and in oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Stevens also studied at the Arts Students League and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He has been involved with traditional and new media as an artist, designer, writer, and film maker for over thirty years.

Stevens was lead author of Embracing Earth: New Views of Our Changing Planet (Chronicle Books, 1992), which appeared in four foreign-language editions. He was also contributing author and artist/designer to the award-winning college textbooks, Geology Today (CRM, 1973) and Biology Today (CRM, 1971). His film credits include a CINE Golden Eagle Award (1980) for a national Public Television broadcast script on Antarctica. From 1981 to 1995, Stevens and his company helped develop a series of sponsored Earth-science reports, brochures, posters, and multimedia projects for the major US science agencies (e.g., NASA, NOAA, USGS). These won numerous awards for design and writing in annual competitions (e.g., Society for Technical Communication, Graphis International Poster Annual).

Stevens helped pioneer the field of interactive multimedia starting in 1987. He produced and directed ten acclaimed educational CD-ROM titles on Earth-science and environmental subjects, two of which debuted at the Smithsonian Institution's 1995 “Ocean Planet Exhibition.” In 1994, InterNetwork received the Presidential Design Award for Excellence from President Clinton for the CD-ROM science-journal prototype, Arctic Data InterActive, the first time this honor had been given for multimedia work. Stevens is also an accomplished public speaker and has presented at numerous conferences on the environment, technology, and design. He has advised on environmental sustainability and ecotourism issues for the Great Himalayan National Park in India (the country's newest national park). He co-authored and packaged Meshuggenary: Celebrating the World of Yiddish (Simon & Schuster, 2002).

Concomitant with his science/communication work, he has continued to do fine art in both traditional and computer-generated formats since 1970. His electrographic art was in many group shows in the 1970s and was published in the first book on this art form, Copy Art (Marek Publishers, New York, 1978). His computer art was featured on the SIGGRAPH 83 Art Show Poster and exhibited at SIGGRAPH (1983) and other group shows (e.g., White Light Gallery, New York City, 1987). His computer art was published in the book, Computer Images: State of the Art (Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1983) and is found in corporate and private collections. Stevens is currently painting/drawing in his studio in Del Mar, California, and during annual trips to the Kullu Valley, India where he lives part of the year with his wife, the writer Kamla Kapur.

Web sites links to related professional work:

ENERGY LANDSCAPES. The Art of Payson R. Stevens