Power Boothe
b. 1945
“A Hartford Biography”
© Gary W. Knoble, 2016
Boothe is a painter, set designer, film and video producer, academic administrator, and teacher. He has been a prominent figure in the Hartford art world since he moved there in 2001 to become the dean of the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. He is broadly versed in the liberal arts and an eloquent advocate of the interaction between the various artistic and cultural fields, which is reflected in his intelligent and refined paintings.
Power Boothe was born on March 12, 1945 in Dallas, Texas to Tom Wheeler Boothe and Shirlee Barth Boothe. He grew up in San Francisco. While in high school he studied at the California School of Arts and Crafts.
He studied art at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, graduating in 1969. His mentor at Colorado College was Bernard Arnest. He says Arnest was his model of how to be an administrator, an artist, and an educator, a path that Boothe has followed with success.
“I was concerned about my ability to do well in college and as an artist — I was not at all confident I would be able to succeed in the world. He saw my potential and made the case that I should be at CC instead of art school, and that I should go to New York City. I really felt he was looking out for us as individuals; he kept seeing what I could do before I did. In a sense, he gave me the momentum to take charge of my own career — it began with him.”
Boothe also cites Agnes Martin as an important early influence, which is readily apparent from this image of Martin’s work.
With Arnest’s help he obtained admission to the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 1967 and 1968.
In 1969 following Arnest’s suggestion, he moved to New York City after graduation, where he continued to pursue his broad interests in the liberal arts and the interaction between the various fields of art.
In addition to his reputation as a painter, Boothe is known for his accomplishments as a set designer for theater, dance and video. He has produced short films and visual theater, for which he received a Bessie Award for set design, a Film/Video Arts Foundation Award for film, and several Grants for his theater productions. He has designed sets for Obie Award-winning productions and has directed and designed music videos that have received international recognition. Perhaps his best-known set design was for Cindy Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” video in 1983.
He has worked at several distinguished venues including: the Guggenheim Museum in 1970; the Performing Garage in 1978; the Dance Theater Workshop from 1981-1985, 1987, 1988, and 1991; Lynn Austin’s Musical Theater in 1982, the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1986, the Loeb Theater in 1986, the San Francisco Opera in 1987, and the Danny Kaye Theater in 1993. He has also produced several short films that have been shown at The Kitchen in 1985, the Collective for Living Cinema in 1987, and the San Francisco Cinema Theater in 1987.
During the 80’s he was a member of the “Soho Arts Colony”, a movement that is documented in Richard Kostelanetz’s book by the same name. He has collaborated with such figures as Doug Varone, Lucinda Charle, David Gordon, and Charles Moutton.
Among the people he interacted with during the 80’s in New York was Virgil Thomson, the American composer best noted for his music for the opera “Four Saints in Three Acts” to a text by Gertrude Stein. Boothe designed the sets for a revival of Thomson and Stein’s second opera, “The Mother of Us All”. Thomson was please with the result and Boothe was asked by David Gordon to design the sets for a BAM production of “Four Saints”, which would have celebrated its 50th anniversary. Sadly this production did not take place, being replaced by the 10th anniversary production of Phillp Glass’ “Einstein on the Beach”. Boothe was asked by Thomson to participate in one of his joint portrait exercises. While Thomson was writing a musical portrait of Boothe, Boothe was to draw a portrait of Thomson. Inspired by Thomson’s “abstract” musical portraits Boothe chose to draw an abstract portrait as well. When Thomson saw the result his response was, “I though you were serious, but you were just messing around.”
Just as his mentor Arnest, Boothe has also been a teacher and academic administrator. As early as 1977 he was director of a summer program at Colorado College. From 1989 to 1995 he was a Lecturer in the Humanities in the Visual Arts Program at Princeton University. From 1993 to 1998 he was Director of the School of Art Maryland Institute, College of Art. From 1998 to 2000 he taught at Ohio University. From 2001 to 2010 he was Dean of the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford. From 2011 to the present he has taught at the Hartford Art School. He says he chose the Hartford Art School because the program there was strongly linked to the liberal arts. “It represents what I believe is the ideal background for any artist. I don’t want to make any rules, but I cannot imagine a better way to educate an artist than to combine the liberal arts with a studio experience.”
He has continued to pursue his broad interests in the arts through continuing studies. In 1990 he studied classical architecture at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. He also studied at the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies in Italy and studied philosophy and cognitive studies at the University of California at Berkeley in 1996.
He has been a visiting lecturer at many local schools and institutions including Trinity College in 1991, the Wadsworth Atheneum in 2002, the West Hartford Art League and the Atheneum in 2007, the Connecticut Art Education Association the Atheneum and the New Britain Museum of American Art in 2010, and the Mystic Art Center in 2014.
He received an honorary Doctorate in 1989 from his alma mater, Colorado College
Boothe has served on countless panels and juries including the Gallery on the Green in Canton in 2002, the West Hartford Art League in 2004, the Mystic Art Center and the Silvermine Art Center in 2006, the West Hartford Art League and ArtSpace Hartford in 2009, ArtSpace Hartford in 2010, and the Mystic Art Center and the Five Points Gallery in 2014.
His many local exhibitions include “Interspace Line and Color” at the Washington Art Association in Washington Depot in 2008; “Out of Order” at the NBMAA in 2011; “Minimalist Aesthetic” at the Wadsworth Atheneum and an exhibition at ArtSpace Hartford in 2012; exhibitions at the Five Points Gallery in Torrington, the EBK Gallery in Hartford, and the Borderline Gallery in 2014; the UCONN Health Center in 2015-2016; and the Giampietro Gallery in New Haven and “Abstraction Part 1” at the Five Points Gallery in 2016.
A review of the 2014 Five Points Show by Tracy O’Shaughnessy in the May 4, 2014 Waterbury Republican American vividly describes Boothe’s elegant aesthetic. “In works like ‘Zino’, Boothe creates a heavenly blue sky over which he imposes trim white lines that link and then evaporate. Occasionally, a narrow, baton like black line divides this seraphic sphere. It is as if Booth is saying that even in the most paradisiacal vistas, we insist on an order, even if the order falls apart. Perhaps this marriage of intuition and order is a reminder that the visceral and the analytic are forever at loggerheads, the resolution of which can be beautiful to watch.”
In 2015 he honored Agnes Martin’s by curating a show of her works at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
Boothe’s grants include the National Endowment of the Arts in 1984, 1985, and 1997; a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Fellowship in 1989; a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985; an Andy Warhol Foundation Grant in 2000; and a Yaddo Residency.
He is on the board of the Wadsworth Atheneum and is represented by the Giampietro Gallery in New Haven.
In 1998 Boothe married Lynne Steincamp a costume designer who has worked with many dancers and choreographers. (They met during a project of Doug Varone’s in 1992.) She has been a Consultant for the Trish Brown Company for over ten years.
They live on a small horse farm in Harwington, Connecticut where his wife raises horses. (In 2011 he moved the paintings for his show at the NBMAA in a horse trailer.)
Boothe’s art is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the British Museum, the NBMAA, and the William Benton Museum.
Boothe says, “There are two types of art in my opinion. You have ‘Wow’ art, and you have ‘Ahh’ art. ‘Wow’ art is what fills most galleries, and it’s created to hit the observer with something right away. It’s fast, gets to the point, and it kind of bores me. ‘Ahh’ art, on the other hand, makes you think. Agnes Martin’s has a lot of ‘Ahh’. It can invite you in. You have to get in and stay with that work and think about it. I’ll tell you, as a young artist, her work opened a door for me.”
“Because art making is not a rational business, I can’t consciously know how to arrive at a painting that will come alive for me. If I cannot follow its mute visual language of feeling, if I cannot subjectively follow the painting’s flow of energy, I will be stuck with my reasoned plans, or worse, stuck with my old habits, and the painting will surely die. If meaning is going to come alive for me (and hopefully for another human being), the painting must take an unexpected turn away from where I began. Something unpredictable must happen. The painting must ignore my intent and assert its own.
A painting is a stranger to me until that moment when it goes off course, and I am compelled to follow. This direction change is essential. It is when the painting becomes real. I think of it as the ‘knight move’ in chess. Its path is never a straight line. Although I can’t see around the bend, I am able to hear that something is there. I’m just not sure what it will look like. When this happens it’s not my intent that matters; the painting’s forces are no longer under my control. My plans need to be forgotten so I can get to the edge of what I do not know.
If I see something out of the corner of my eye, why does its ambiguity make it more real? There are always doubts when it comes to choice and value. The hand grasps, the mouth eats, the tongue speaks. I am hungry. Painting. ‘Moving, seeking, discovering and scavenging for my next meal’ is the name of the game.” (geoform.net)
Catlin, Roger, “Power Booth’s Retrospective at New Britain Museum”, 1/30/2011
Geoform.net, curated by Julie Karabenick, “Power Booth”
Coloradocollege.edu, “Boothe”, April 2004Powerboothe.com
O’Shaughnessy, Tracy, “Boothe A Showstopper in Torrington”, Waterbury Republican American, May 4, 2014
Varone, Doug, dougvaroneanddancers.org
Widewalls.ch, “Power Boothe
Wright, Bret, “Power Boothe seeks a bit of Agnes Martin’s magic”, Colorado Springs Independent”, 7/22/2015
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