Steward Studios

ST. PETERSBURG — Margaret Steward told her friends not to worry about making mistakes. She drove her artwork ahead by learning new techniques, and preferred growth to repetition or even mastery.

She shaped her life the same way. She studied filmmaking, then geology. She married and had a child. She gave up a secure job to return to art — and won a best-in-show award at one of the area's largest art festivals.

With Mrs. Steward, there was always a next step. She once described her artwork as having "a rough look, which I like." She was a photographer, painter, sculptor and mixed-media artist.

Mrs. Steward, who pushed herself to new vistas and enjoyed the hunt, died Tuesday. She was 56 and had breast cancer.

"I don't sit down and say, 'I think I'm going to think about an art idea today,' " she said in 2000. "They sort of bubble up any time of the day or night, and I'll get inspiration for something."

Friends remember her as a bright and self-aware artist, a vegetarian who taught Kundalini yoga and meditated before she worked. "I'll joke or say something irreverent, or blurt something out and fix it later," said fellow artist Nancy Cervenka. "She came off as really serious because she didn't know how to do that."

But Mrs. Stewart never missed the humor around her. "Her laugh came right from her belly. It would almost explode," said Cervenka, 54.

Mrs. Steward worked out of a home studio in paint-spattered clothes and an apron, listening to recorded yoga chants. She invited other artists in to explore printmaking or sculpting with paper clay.

"She would say, 'Come on, let's play,' " Cervenka said.

Margaret Murphy was born in Italy, the daughter of a Foreign Service worker. She majored in cinematography at Bard College, but concluded there was no money for artists in the genre. She went to the University of South Florida for a geology degree — and met and married oceanographer Robert Steward, a scientist who loved art. She worked as a geologist but found it unfulfilling.

In 1992, Mrs. Steward won a term as artist-in-residence at the Arts Center. She sculpted more, experimented with printing, and her work became more abstract. She lectured at colleges, exhibited widely and racked up 14 awards for her work in the 1990s alone.

In 2000, Mrs. Steward won top honors and $10,000 at the Mainsail Arts Festival. Crossing is a star-shaped wood sculpture of perpendicular canoes joined at the center. An oar rests across the gunwales, with a feather at the end of the oar.

"The piece was all about how you could sit in one place and go where you want to go," she said, "as long as you row lightly."

Other artists are gathering her work from the Anderson Arts Center in Colorado, where Mrs. Steward served as artist-in-residence late last year. There will be at least one more show.

"The Kundalini yoga practice is about leaving a legacy," said Jamie Lubin of Yoga Village, where Mrs. Steward studied and taught yoga for several years, holding her last class a few weeks ago. "And seeing all of this beautiful artwork, she certainly accomplished that."

Andrew Meacham, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, April 4, 2010

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