3 Things to Know About 2020 Distinguished Alum Will Boone ('01)

1. Houston is a huge part of Will Boone’s work.

Though Will is based in Los Angeles and formerly lived in New York City — and his art has been shown in places like London, Paris, and Rome — Houston continues to influence his projects. Of his show The Highway Hex at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, he says, “It means a lot to me to be taking this step forward as an artist [with my first museum show], and simultaneously to be able to return to a place that I care about deeply. At the same time, it’s a little bit like the Twilight Zone.”

2. Monsters and Metal and Music (Oh My!)

Will draws from traditions typically outside the realm of fine art, like horror movies, punk rock, and industrial manufacturing processes. In a profile of Will for W Magazine, writer Andrew Russeth described just a corner of Will’s studio as having, “a short shelf bearing a collection of cardboard dominoes, dice fashioned from bread, and other curios—like a coin with a bullet shot through it, and a stuffed snake he picked up in a junk store in Houston, where he grew up.”

3. Will Boone is also a filmmaker.

You can see his film Sweet Perfume at The Highway Hex exhibition. It stars his wife and collaborator Stephanie Boone as the monster from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Together, they give the pop-culture figure a very different portrayal than in the slasher film. He describes it this way: “[T]he video is about someone dealing with who they are—the intersection of who they have been and who they want to be. It’s also about the mind-warping physical space between Houston and Los Angeles: 1,500 miles on Interstate 10 through the desert. El Paso is half way.”

Want to learn even more about Will? Check out the abridged timeline of his bibliography below, or click here to see his full Artist’s CV.

We hope you’ll join us to celebrate Rhoda and Will at the 14^th Annual Encore Luncheon on Tuesday, March 3^rd.

Tables and tickets are available for purchase here!