By: Mary Genson | C&G Newspapers | Published August 18, 2025
SOUTHFIELD/ TROY — Artist Keven Bahoora uses natural materials in his art, which is being displayed indefinitely at the Italcasa showroom in the Michigan Design Center, 1700 Stutz Drive, Suite 25, in Troy. Bahoora grew up in Southfield and now lives in Las Vegas.
One of the works of art at the showroom is a life-size piece made of sand. The subject is a “metaphorical Adam type figure,” depicted, “knowing what we know now,” he said.
Bahoora said he was inspired to do this after being hired to draw the Sistine Chapel ceiling, “Creation of Adam,” in the 1990s.
This piece, titled “man,” shows a Black man sitting in East Africa at the “junction between drought and storm,” Bahoora said.
While creating this project, he set constraints for himself to follow, including the involvement of light in the piece, and the use of sand and dirt.
Through the process of creating this 8-foot piece, Bahoora said, it was the first time he decided to “marry image with medium.”
This piece inspired him to begin the process of creating an Eve piece, depicting Eve in a bed of leaves — which will be made out of leaves — with her skin, hair and body made of rose petals. This piece is still in progress.
“When I was doing it, I got stuck. I could not figure out how to preserve color, particularly pinks and reds — and that was going to be part of this Eve piece I was doing,” Bahoora said. “So I stopped, and I said, ‘OK, let’s learn how to preserve organic material in a way that we could retain its color and not have it change.’”
Bahoora said this process took 15 years, which eventually inspired him to make a rose out of rose petals — one of the pieces on display at the Italcasa showroom in the Michigan Design Center, “Red Rose.”
This 7-foot rose was made out of rose petals on wood. No paints or pigments were used. In addition to these two major pieces, several other pieces by Bahoora are at the Italcasa showroom.
Nair (Mike) Bahoora, of the Michigan Design Center, is Kevin Bahoora’s cousin and encouraged him to show his work in their Art Walk.
“He’s got it displayed throughout our store, and it complements our furniture perfectly.”
Bahoora’s artistic journey
Kevin Bahoora is a self-taught artist, and he said that when he was first learning how to draw, he was using charcoal to learn values, shades and shapes. He said this technique transferred easily to working with sand.
“I actually became a chiropractic physician so that I could be an artist. The rationale behind it being that I know they didn’t teach this stuff in art school. It was going to take a lot of years and a lot of money to learn how to make it, because there’s going to be a lot of failures with preserving organic material,” Bahoora said.
Once he figured out how to preserve the color, he became a full-time artist.
While Bahoora was working on the rose piece, his wife became ill. He brought their bed into his studio so that he could take care of her.
“She is my reason for doing everything. All of this — she’s my inspiration for everything.”
The pieces are on display at the Italcasa showroom in the Michigan Design Center. For more information on the showroom, visit michigandesign.com. There are limited edition giclée prints available for all pieces and the artist does commissioned work.