At The Crossroads

My mind dances between earth and sky, memory, and ever pressing facts of the present. I easily think, “What if?”  All my life I have been restless. From childhood I learned by feeling and touching, then putting facts together. Given only facts and no experience I am lost. If I had been educated with an arts based curriculum from the beginning, many years would not have been wasted in schooling. 

My mother, Chloris, as a young artist

I have always been on a creative journey. It is my temperament. From an early age, I felt as though the world was my canvas to create art. Thankfully, my parents, especially my mother, encouraged the artist within. She signed me up for special Saturday art classes at a downtown Washington DC museum. She bought me a silver flute and paid for lessons. My father encouraged cultural and social participation in society, and sent me off to work on the Navajo Reservation when I was a junior in High School. I won awards for my painting and writing. World literature was one of my favorite courses. Like my parents, I have been an avid reader all my life. By the time I was eighteen, I had read all the important books by Russian authors Tolstoi, Pasternak and Dostoevsky.

When I decided to go to art college, my parents paid for my studies until I graduated in three years. It has been a blessing that I have been able to make a living as an artist for four decades. Meanwhile I have written books and poetry, become a known photographer and travelled around the world twice, living in thirty countries.

My restless personality, prone to chaos, has been a wellspring and curse. I am in my fourth, and I expect last marriage. This time, thankfully, Amy is also an artist and understands what fuels my creative temperament.

I have two daughters; although my oldest, Naomi, died at age nineteen. I always say I have two children. Naomi my teacher, and Sarah, my joy.

Now, at a mature stage in life, I face a challenging phase of my journey with moments of indecision. It seems my sense of urgency is gone, and being on edge⏤that sense that fuels creative breakthroughs⏤is diminished. Lately, when standing at the crossroads of creativity I have felt at task, whereas earlier in life excitement prevailed. The charging stallion is more apt to walk these days.

Each talent calls out, yet my storehouse of energy has faded with age. I do not have self-doubt or anxiety yet I am cognizant of how my physical powers have faded with time. That said, some of my most important paintings have been made since we moved to Mexico several years ago. That change of life, in itself was no small feat. More new and different paintings are to come for sure, as will the photographs and the writing. Instead of choosing one passion over another, through the years I have explored synergy between creative pursuits. I have blended talents. 

I hope my work reflects a multifaceted soul, resonating with people from all walks of life. Maybe I am a true renaissance man.

In the end, instead of limiting ourselves to a single path, we can weave together our diverse talents into a tapestry of infinite possibilities. Each one of us holds the power to carve a unique path, blending our passions in special ways. 

It is at the crossroads that we discover our truest selves.

Santa Italiano

He called on New Year day around dinner time but my phone was turned off. When I saw I had a message from him, at 10:30 PM, I was surprised and happy. “Gosh, it has been a long time,” I thought. Amazing he is still alive—he must be about 89 years old.

Ralph Caprio, a second generation Italian American, always worked with my father and was a steady presence from the start of my life in Chicago. My father, Richard W. Boone (March 29, 1927 – February 26, 2014), always rose to leadership positions throughout his life, and chose to have Ralph beside him. When our family moved, so did Ralph. 

Handsome and spry, Ralph stayed a bachelor—always with girlfriends. He had style, and effused ebullience.  

All the Boone family loved Ralph. He loved us for the family he never had. In fact, Ralph was our Santa Claus. My parents had five children in eight years. Early on, we were very poor. Living in a tenement on Chicago’s south side, at Christmas, there were meager gifts beneath the tree. Then, on a cold Christmas morning, Ralph would arrive at our door, arms laden with the best presents for us kids. A knock sounded and when the door opened all of us little ones would shout with glee, “Ralph!”

I only had to debate a moment to decide to call him back. I knew it was almost midnight in Chicago on New Year day. I know Ralph has the ability to live on four hours sleep daily, and prefers living that way.

I called back and after a few rings a youthful, familiar voice rang out, “Hey Steve, happy New Year!” He mostly wanted to know how I am. He mentioned that my mother and father would be proud of me and then said, “I love you” before hanging up. 

Amy had been nearby when she heard Ralph answer, and remarked, “Wow, he sounds so youthful and bright!”

Yes, he has always been like that.

An Early Awakening

When I was but a toddler, my father would carry me in the early morning to the local bakery. We took a route through the back alleys behind our tenement building in Chicago. It was before my brothers and sister were born. He would hoist me atop his shoulders and I would hold on to his head. At the bakery he put me down and when the door opened, the light, warmth and sweet fragrance poured forth. On the way back one morning, a bird flew into the brick walls nearby. It is so far back in my memory . . . but I distinctly remember the fright of the beautiful winged creature. Was it blind? Or trapped? 

Why did this brief experience have such an impression on me as to last all my life? Certainly, to see a bird fly against a wall or glass, as if blind, is a jarring sight.

Now, six decades later, I drive to work and park my van in a city garage, then take my bike out and ride to my gallery. There are four parking levels. Birds come in the garage, and sometimes they fly up the stairwell and think they have reached daylight at the top level, only to smash into a big panel of glass. Often, feathers are strewn about the concrete floor. Once I found a dead bird and took it home for burial.

Birds represent freedom and are like unto spirit. In many ways they are angelic. So to see one fooled by glass and be trapped or hurt flying into a transparent barrier, reinforces the feeling that physical life is not what it seems—it also holds death. For my childhood eyes, the vision startled me, but also was an early awakening.

Khaos

The ancient Greeks believed Chaos was the first thing to exist from which the primordial deities came; including Gaia, the ancestral mother of all life, Eros, a god involved in the birth of the cosmos, and Tartarus, both a deity and a place in the underworld—also the unbounded first-existing entity from which the Light and the cosmos are born.

The word khaos means "gap" or "chasm" being the space between heaven and earth.

Chaos has always been a partner to me in life. During early childhood, it was a natural part of magical life and development. Yet like everyone else, I was trained away from it in favor of order. Then it felt like waging war between good and evil.

When this happened a deep division came into my life. From then on I felt as though walking a tightrope. To fall was to descend into the chasm of chaos.

I remember being with other teenagers and driving out on the town one night. When the music was being changed between channels, static came on and I said "leave it there." Everyone laughed but I preferred it for awhile;  the little interval of chaos.

Shortly thereafter, I became afraid of dark forces in the universe and in myself, and turned against chaos. I suffered. Part of the equation of existence is that in life, mistakes happen, surprises occur, plans are upset, the unexpected happens. Chaos is in everything to some degree.


The "chasm" between heaven and earth is a fertile place. I believe, as did the Greeks, it is where creativity begins.

I have become stubborn about leaving space for it.

In my artwork, some of the best results come when there are "happy accidents". The mind comes to an impasse and sort of collapses into "unknowing" . . .  a place is messed or destroyed on the canvas yet in the destruction the hint of something with great beauty and clarity arises like a phoenix. It could only come about through destruction.

When I am out on the streets photographing, I often stop to study and take pictures of random textures and forms that seemingly come from chaos. Sometimes they are quite beautiful—the scrapings across metal, leaves floating in streams, random blazing clouds at sunset, or many other chance interchanges that leave marks upon nature.

I have learned in myself too, to make room for surprise. It is necessary.