A Marvelous Garden of Humanity

I take solace in the little garden Amy and I have in our front yard. The plants need care each day to establish themselves. The soil is poor by nature in these parts, the sun can be brutal, and to add injury cutworms and other pests arrive to attack the tender stems. 

I have a personal relationship with each plant. I have nurtured and supported each one, so when a death occurs I grieve a little.

The turmoil in our world today grevious. Covid-19 virus causing worldwide destruction, many wars and conflicts have killed and displaced populations, corrupt governments are in power while desperate dying people languish . . . and now in America the racial divide is coming into sharp focus with the video taped murder of a black man by a police officer in Minneapolis, MN, USA.

All these issues are cathartic—but hopefully will lead to healing.

As my beloved daughter Naomi said when she battled her terminal illness at age 18, “Hardships can make us stronger. I don’t have complete evidence, but every situation has some good in it.”

My wife Amy particularly has been staying tuned to events in Minneapolis where severe rioting broke out in the aftermath of the police killing. She lived there from 1983 - 1992, was very involved in the community and had great success as an artist. Her sons are raising their families there now. Amy knows the neighborhoods that have burned.

I have lived in a city where race riots raged and buildings burned. In 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, swaths of downtown Washington DC had storefronts broken, then looted and burned to the ground. Black radical leaders were enraged and called for armed insurgency against an America that had double standards for black and white citizens. 

I was in high school then and in a neighborhood far removed from ghettos. Still, I felt the rage nearby.

Now, 52 years later, disparities remain.

Like plants, people need the same tender care from the beginning of life. They must have fertile soil to grow in, have equal protections against disease, blight and pestilence. Each must be watered according to their needs; some more some less. Then we will see a marvelous garden of humanity, resplendent in color and form, shedding its grace in the universe in which it thrives.

Everyone Is Colored

Whenever I hear the term “people of color”, there is a deafening silence that ensues. The silence is my own, since I object so much to the term and have to swallow it quietly. Certainly, this particular saying is the offspring of America’s troubled racial history—when it was necessary to separate people by skin color. I have traveled the world and know firsthand that to describe someone as “colored” in a country like say, Egypt, would bring laughter and bewilderment. It is so obvious that everyone is colored.

To say “people of color” is like saying “apples of the trees” or “horses of four legs” and yet, people continue to make use of this phrase and it is often heard in otherwise serious conversation. I have written on this subject before, see: People Of Color.

Recently, I have been working on a series of images using photos I took several years ago. At the time, I arranged to work with a very light skinned young woman, and asked her if she would model with a male. She told me her roommate would probably agree, and that he was black. Immediately, I welcomed this arrangement and soon, we were in my studio to work together. The entire session was delightful, especially since the two young people were perfectly at ease with each other and uninhibited enough to be naked and close and without tension. They were like little children—innocent, free, and untainted by guilt from notions of original sin.

I have been re-visiting the images from those sessions. With my wide-format printer, I can print on paper or canvas, up to almost four feet wide. Then I stretch the canvas on to stretcher bars, as I normally do with paintings. After that, I can paint them, making them into more than simple photographs. They become mixed-media art.

While I work, I love the contrast between her pale skin tones and his rich, chocolate color. In places, I intentionally blur areas that separate them, so that they are melding together.

See more Steven Boone Artwork