Artist, Teacher, Optimist: The Legacy of Mayo Mac Boggs

Written by Chris Worthy

When the crisp blue skies of Sept. 11, 2001, were shattered with the unimaginable, the day became a bright-line demarcation. There was “the before” and “the after.” For Mayo Mac Boggs, Converse Professor Emeritus of Art, the way forward in the new world began to take shape in the form of a monument that he proposed to remember those lost and create a unifying moment for humanity.

Mac Boggs was a prolific artist and beloved teacher who died in 2014. He taught for more than 40 years at Converse, encouraging and mentoring young artists, leading travel programs and promoting the importance of the arts. He was, by all accounts, an optimist who saw the joy of life in three dimensions. His wife, Ansley Boggs, Converse Associate Professor Emerita, said Mac studied art at a time when artists did not specialize, so even though he turned his steelworker heritage into insightful sculptures, he “learned everything,” she said, noting that he studied and became skilled in a variety of media.

“He painted. He did bronze work, and he taught all of this at Converse as well,” she said. “He also went to Italy for a summer where he learned how to carve marble, and he brought back 3,000 pounds of marble.”

To Remember and Honor

But art was more than Mac’s profession. It was the way he spoke about the world. That is evident in an enduring design proposal, “The Ring of Peace” (also known as “The Halo Project”), which was recently chosen to be included in the World Trade Center Memorial Museum’s project commemorating the 25th anniversary of 9/11. His 2003 proposal will be featured, along with an audio explanation that includes an interview with Ansley conducted by the 25th Memorial Project committee.

The memorial proposal reflects Mac’s roots, his passion and his desire to have people everywhere connect through a shared experience.

“My concept is to design and build a large stainless steel sculpture that consists of a narrow space that would allow people to walk through it,” Mac wrote in his proposal.

“The monument would provide a personal moment to reflect on the tragedy of September 11, 2001, thereby uniting all people at least for a moment as they walk through the identical spaces.”

Mac Boggs

His vision included two towers, one halo above them, and a design that could be replicated in identical sculptures across the United States and in other countries. It would create a trans-visual activity that would unite visitors in reflection on the magnitude of the 9/11 tragedy, as well as the strength of the human spirit.

“The result would be that people, hundreds or thousands of miles apart, could walk through a space and think to themselves, ‘Possibly someone in New York City and other locations in the world is walking through an identical space at the same time I am,’” Mac wrote. “This activity, being experienced simultaneously by individuals in different locations on this Earth, would allow human beings with different political ideologies and religious beliefs to communicate without language. The monument would provide a personal moment to reflect on the tragedy of September 11, 2001, thereby uniting all people at least for a moment as they walk through the identical spaces.”

25 Years Later

Though the proposal did not come to physical fruition, Mac pursued it for years, along with his hope that it would unite people in peace. The 9/11 Memorial became a passion for Mac long before an official commemoration was in the works.

“He could make friends with anybody, even people he’d never seen or met. He could win people over in a phone call.”

Dr. Ansley Boggs

“He said that one of the purposes of art was to express the events and the emotions of what’s happening at the time,” Ansley said. “He had scrap metal of different shapes and sizes outside his studio, and to him, those were his words, as a poet would have words, or a composer would have musical notes. That’s how he expressed himself. He would go out to his pile of scrap metal, choose some words, go in his studio, weld it together, and that was his expression. That was how he spoke. It was just second nature to him, and I think most artists are like that. They express themselves through their art immediately, and so even well before the competition was announced, he started working on it.”

As he developed the idea, Mac began to reach out to anyone who might help – from those directly associated with the World Trade Center buildings and government officials to potential funders and steel fabricators. His wife said it wasn’t a surprise that he was able to connect with people who might otherwise be considered unreachable.

“He could make friends with anybody, even people he’d never seen or met,” she said. “He could win people over in a phone call.”

The 9/11 Memorial competition drew more than 5,000 submissions. Mac’s proposal was among 180 chosen to be featured in “9/11 Memorial Visions: Innovative Concepts from the 2003 World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition,” a book by Lester Levine.

“[Mac} said one can choose a lot of ways to spend his or her time on earth, and he said he chose to have nonverbal conversations with his soul.”

Dr. Ansley Boggs

To be a part of the 25th anniversary commemoration would thrill Mac, his wife said. It would mean the world to a man who turned scraps to art and who never stopped trying to create a better world.

“He said one can choose a lot of ways to spend his or her time on earth, and he said he chose to have nonverbal conversations with his soul,” she said. “And the art was the result of those conversations. He said he could go hours and hours, even a day, without words ever entering his mind. He knew he was never going to run out of ideas. He said his days on the earth would end before he ever ran out of ideas.”