Printmaker, sculptor, and painter James Dexter Havens was born in Rochester, New York on January 13, 1900, the son of the head of legal counsel for Kodak and U.S. Congressman, James S. Haven. He developed juvenile diabetes at age fourteen and was mostly bedridden through his high school years, at which point his focus on art became more significant. Following graduation he enrolled at the Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute (now the Rochester Institute of Technology), but by 1922 he was deathly ill. His father's connections allowed Havens to become the first U.S. citizen to receive the new and still experimental insulin treatment developed at the University of Toronto. This would prive to be one of the first truly successful trials, and Havens was soon recovered enough to finish his studies and begin pursuing an art career. 

Primarily self-taught as a printmaker in his early years, he would later study privately with Troy Kinney, Grant Reynard, John Costigan, Thomas Fogarty, and Charles Woodbury. Color woodcut was a major focus of Havens' output, and he would later be credited with helping revive the art form in the U.S. From 1939 to 1959 he exhibited at the Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibitions, and he helped found the Print Club of Rochester, which still uses his original logo.

Among his awards and recognitions was the American Artists Group prize at the Society of American Graphic Artists Exhibition, NY, 1955; the Ewals Eiserhardt Purchase Award of the Print Club of Rochester in 1936, '39, '49, '51, and '59; the Purchase Award from the Brooklyn Museum, 1947; the Gould Purchase award from the Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition of 1949; and the print prize of the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY, 1946. He was a member of the Society of Washington Printmakers, the Boston Printmakers, the Boston Society of Independent Artists, the Print Makers Society of California, the American Color Print Society, the Prairie Printmakers, the American Water Color Society, the Society of American Graphic Artists, and the Washington Water Color Club. 

James Dexter Havens died in Rochester on November 30, 1960. His work can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Minnespolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; and the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York, among others.