Born in Radford, VA. Raised on the beaches of Los Angeles, after living in various cities throughout the United States, Jack Dempsey Boyd, moved to Missoula, Montana in 1989, having finally found a place that he felt fostered a generative and original community of artist and thinkers.
First displaying his work at the Missoula Art Museum's juried exhibition celebrating the inauguration of the Missoula Osprey 1999, Boyd has continued to be motivated by the originality he felt so moved by upon moving to Missoula, developing a style that refrains from direct influence, permitting him a more open, intuitive, even roving, method, binding the ideas that emerge from a quiet, undiluted mind with the objects of the consumer world.
Intrigued by the surface and sensory tension between replication and progression, Boyd's assemblage sculptures of revivified, often technological, ephemera have recently trained their interest on manipulating the icons and tropes of the art of the American West. Boyd's work can be found in various establishments within Missoula, as well as in private collections throughout the country.
“in silence the conduit creates gold”
Numinosity
For me, sculpture is a physical manifestation of the ineffable. A great mystery plays coyly with me, and all artists, through an idea, vision, or inspiration. It invites us to be passive in our interpretation, yet bold in our execution when bringing these numinous communications into being. The responsibility of the artist is to be receptive to grace and to answer the call with physical manifestation, ushering in a transformation from the mystical to the mundane. When artists can get out of their own way and allow this transformation, the completed work can be imbued with such power as to leave the viewer awestruck, unable to find any logic in their wonder. This power is rarely comprehended at a conscious level until a time well after the piece’s creation. In this way, the artist can act as conduit and soothsayer – a diviner of unconscious content that defines and drives important characteristics of culture perhaps not yet understood by the collective.
Narrative
Many people want to know the stories behind my work. I find that the story is not in the completed piece, but evolves in the creative process itself. The narrative unfolds second by second (or more accurately, no-second by no-second) within the act of creating, free of the concepts of time and space, in constant flux, patiently observed by a subdued ego. In this way, the sculpture takes on its own narrative that often I do not fully comprehend. Further, for me to attempt to tell this story would distract viewers from an important truth – what meaning does the work evoke for them? The stories that people have shared are amazing! I have contemplated leaving completed works untitled for this reason. (The truth is though, I enjoy coming up with titles as a somewhat separate creative game, loosely related to the piece itself).
Inspiration
The facet of process that I find most intriguing is inspiration – how do artists know what to create? I receive creative inspiration in two ways: Inside-out and outside-in. Inside-out happens when, from out of the blue, an image shows itself to me. The image is typically complete and my responsibility is to collect the needed materials and assemble them into the physical version of this numinous gift. It is truly a miracle! Outside-in inspiration occurs when I see something in the physical world that sends me into a creative state of designing on my own; it elicits the images of what I want to create.
