The origins of my artistic leanings are long lost in the refuse generated by a family of nine boys and a girl growing up in Phoenix in the seventies. Efficiently stigmatized by the Jesuits at the all-boy high school I attended, my early adulthood was characterized by a distinct lack of faith in man's ability to manage or even rescue our planet and a subsequent tour in the ranks of the disenfranchised. It wasn’t until a local stained glass outfit recruited me in 1981 that I began to develop my creative side.
Living the life of a starving artist, I struggled to provide support for my daughter, Alexis, and reveled in the freedom of few responsibilities to bow to and no money to manage. Haunting the streets on ever-larger motorcycles, I absorbed the rich variety of urban culture from underground clubs to mansion parties.
Married again in 1987, with a mortgage and my new son Kevin, I took on the veneer of respectability while never venturing far from my holistic reefer gilded roots.
Despite several years of college, I managed to avoid a lucrative desk job and developed a career as a skilled craftsman, running my own stained glass studio for nine years in Phoenix. Later I worked customizing interior glass and wood in luxury touring coaches in beautiful Eugene, Oregon. Saved from the oppressive gloom of the northwest by a happenstance visit to Santa Barbara, I settled there in 1994. Along the way I learned to fly airplanes and gliders, to scuba dive and fire dance, to love without any expectation of return. It wasn’t until I took a break from self-employment and settled into a regular job that I considered actually putting together a display of my talents in a series of stained glass exhibits in Santa Barbara.
Another marriage, happy but slipping away, left me aimless and churning full speed ahead. The temper of age and experience brought balance to this restless ghost, the inside and outside, the inertia of complete stillness and very fast machines. From bringing art to life to living as art I became immersed in the wonders of local dance and the amazing souls of the Santa Barbara Dance Alliance, and the fresh, selfless theater of Clan Destino. In the giving is the reward and I realized some of the richest times of my life.
Whisked away by the whims of fate and love to the sparse and beautiful lands of northern Arizona I found myself cast into the endeavor of putting together of my own hands and resources a self-sustaining venue of my work. A struggle, indeed, and perhaps an unrealistic goal to run a studio producing high end work by myself while maintaining all the formalities of a contracting business. Facing increased costs in a slumping economy, lacking the support of my bank, and living in a culture that expects super-human sacrafices of its business owners, I closed the shop after two and half years.
Now on the Lost Coast, nestled between the redwoods and the marsh, closer to nature and gradually reducing my monetary needs. I feel like spending some time using very little money, seeing what I really need, creating each day anew, as always.
I see these times ahead for me an already coloring page of artistic expression, in writing, glass and dance. I face the challenge of melding my rage and frustration toward the tragic follies of my government with the certainty that peace and understanding are still appropriate in this crazy fucked up world. I hold fast to the practice of the giving of love and yearn to reach the heights of that lofty ideal.
So daily I say prayers of hope and gratitude, not necessarily to a god, (for to define one is to misunderstand), but simply to acknowledge inside myself the depth and sincerity of these feelings. Here's to 'living the dream', bring on the now!
Christopher Boyle
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