THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 23, 1994 TAG: 9412210169
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANELLE LA BOUVE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 138 lines
A COUNTRY TUNE whined from the jukebox as the shuffling feet of line-dancers brushed the floors. The click of pool cues hitting balls mixed with the clink of glasses at the bar.
Amid the noise at Country World and Billiards, Chesapeake resident Azariah Boone stood, gazing at a painted, brown cement block wall.
He had come not to shoot pool nor dance, but to create art.
Boone is a mural painter.
As he contemplated the wall, bystanders could see the smoky dust-like substance that showered from his right hand as he unconsciously rubbed a piece of chalk.
``I was thinking about keeping the scene in proportion and as realistic and accurate as possible,'' Boone said. ``I wanted the horses to look good, and I had to constantly change the stagecoach portion because I wasn't satisfied with how it looked.''
Boone climbed a silvery metal stepladder and made slight alterations in his 51-foot sketch.
``The sketch is a guideline; it helps to keep everything in place,'' he said. ``The sketch can save you a lot of trouble. While it's in this stage, it can still easily be changed. If you get the sketch like you want it before you start painting, you don't have to make many corrections while you're painting.''
His sketch depicts an action-packed scene from the Old West. Four mighty horses pulling a stagecoach with whirling wheels. The driver is hunched over the reins. The man riding shotgun holds his firearm in a ready position. A mother is frantically dragging her young son out of harm's way. There are columns in front of a saloon and a snarling dog chasing his tail.
Boone began his sketch in early September.
One evening in late October, he finally spread his wrinkled, paint-spattered, vinyl drop cloth on the floor in front of his sketch. Then he began opening quart cans of shiny latex enamel. His palette included bright blues, greens, blacks and dark red.
``Latex flows better on this surface than acrylics,'' Boone said, brushing blue-black strokes across the flanks of a horse. ``I had to put a lot of paint up there to make it look decent. The paint had to be thicker than usual. It's a challenge.''
He descended from his ladder to wash his brush in a bucket of murky celery-colored water and to pick up another paint can, then climbed the ladder once more.
One evening his materials included a half-inch stack of magazine clippings plus photocopies and drawings from the stagecoach era.
Before and during the project, he continually trekked off to libraries at Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University and to public libraries in Portsmouth, Virginia Beach and Suffolk to look for paintings and photographs to inspire his imagination.
``I started researching in May, and I'm still researching,'' Boone said. ``I'm looking for specifics, like the right kind of horses. It took a week to come up with the action of these horses,'' he said, pointing to the muscular movement of the larger-than-life animals, which seem ready to charge across the pool room floor.
This was not Boone's first commission from Denton A. Gibbs Jr., owner of Gibbs' Billiards and Country World and Billiards in Virginia Beach.
``This is about the fourth project he has done for me,'' said Gibbs. ``I just tell him what I would like to have and he puts it all together. He does great work. When we first got him, Boone was doing little caricatures in the mall.''
Country World patrons are already enjoying some of Boone's completed works - three totem poles and another wall mural. A completed mural adjoins the work-in-progress.
In the completed scene, a black-and-gray steer turns to attack a horse, which is following too closely. The rider has been thrown from the saddle. His cowboy hat hangs in mid-air. His legs point skyward, and his red bandana is askew. Otherwise, the mural is a pastoral landscape of a quiet, even lazy herd drive with puffy white clouds overhead and snow-capped, dark, distant mountains.
``My son, Denton Gibbs III, had Boone put him on a horse in this mural,'' said the senior Gibbs. So in the mural the young man who loves gray horses is astride a gray. He has a mustache, a short beard, brown hair, wears a brown hat and vest and a white shirt.
``We still have quite a few walls. We take one wall at a time,'' Gibbs said. ``We'll leave the future up to him.''
``I think Boone's work is super,'' said Wayne Doolin, general manager of Country World. ``Everybody who comes in is just amazed. He takes time to talk with the customers.
``We have plans for a three-dimensional desert scene with cactus, which will go on a rounded wall near the entrance. He'll probably be next year working on that project.''
Boone did research on Native American culture before he began sketching totem designs on one side of three 144-inch columns.
``He'd come in with all these books tucked under his arms,'' Doolin said. ``You'd think he was going to school.''
His totem designs defy description.
``They all look unrealistic because of the Northwest Indian beliefs,'' Boone said. ``They made their designs on trees. I guess the idea was more into the spiritual aspect of the creatures. So that's why they look like they do. When I started, I didn't have a set theme. I was just going to piece together a totem pole idea. But, once I got started, I came up with different totem themes.''
On one pole, the head of a small child sticks out of the mother's mouth.
``As I worked, I decided to give the middle pole a ferocious theme using a bear, a goat and different creatures,'' said Boone, a 1978 art education graduate from Norfolk State. ``There's a buffalo near the bottom. I topped them all with birds. The workers at Country World named the other one `the weird thing.' This was my first time for totem poles and the western theme.''
The long walls at Gibbs' Billiards are an example of some of his first mural work. The faces of celebrities - Woody Allen, Elvis Presley, Sammy Davis Jr., Telly Savalas, Carroll O'Connor, The Beatles, Jimmy Carter, Richard M. Nixon, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, the Marx Brothers, Cary Grant, Kenny Rogers, Cher and others - line the wall.
``Right after we opened about 11 years ago, Boone got started,'' said Herbert L. Ripley, manager at Gibbs' Billiards. ``We've had people come from all over to look at his caricatures. I like that there,'' he said pointing to Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. ``I used to watch him. It amazed me. He was very proud of his work. I'd give anything if I could do it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by Steve Earley
[Color cover photo. Chesapeake artist Azariah Boone.]
Chesapeake resident Azariah Boone applies latex enamel paint to the
wall mural at County World and Billiards, which he began sketching
in September.
A detail from one of Boone's totem columns.
Azariah Boone climbs a metal stepladder to touch up his 51-foot Old
West mural at County World and Billiards.
A finished cowboy mural is the backdrop at County World patron
Donald Coats concentrates on his pool game.
by CNB