About Dr. Dennis Stevens
Dennis Stevens is an artist, educator, and researcher exploring symbolic cognition, AI governance, and veteran experience. He created Poewell, a constitutionally governed visual storytelling platform that supports symbolic meaning-making for veterans.
U.S. Coast Guard veteran, visual artist, and author of Sacred Descent of the Warrior.
I hold a Doctor of Education in Art and Art Education from Columbia University's Teachers College and founded the Sempergeist Institute (operating as Conway Cultural Development Corporation), a creative placemaking nonprofit dedicated to healing through art, ritual, and visual storytelling.
My current work centers on Poewell, a constitutionally governed visual storytelling platform that helps veterans and individuals navigating profound loss express and integrate complex emotions through guided narrative exploration and evolving visual worlds. Using AI-assisted therapeutic environments and peer cohort interaction, Poewell provides nonverbal pathways for meaning-making while preserving participant autonomy and dignity through ritual grammar and metacognitive scaffolding.
My work explores trauma and moral injury beyond purely clinical or technical frameworks. Grounded in older intellectual lineages and the use of symbolic cognition, metaphor, and narrative, it distinguishes repair from healing and treats suffering as an embodied process that must be endured, interpreted, and integrated rather than solved or performed.
Example Digital, Narrative Artworks by Dennis Stevens, Ed.D., created via the Poewell platform
