Original Post April 4th, 2010
Just a couple of Saturdays ago a new face walked in the door of the gallery. He had just moved to town and said he was an artist wondering if he could show his work here at the gallery. He wondered if we would be interested in it as many galleries weren't interested in his "religious" style. Later he brought in examples of his work along with a notebook filled with information about his art including an article from the 12/20/2001 issue of the
Catholic Spirit by Emilie Ast (Emilie passed away in December of 2008).
As Ms. Ast is a far better writer and Michael told so much of his history in this article, I am going to reprint portions of this article here on the gallery blog interspersed with images of the work he has here at the gallery.
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| Print of Michael Boyland's drawing of Mother Teresa at our gallery |
"Mother Teresa's face is full of deep crags and pencil-shaded shadows. She clasps a rosary in her wrinkled hands as she prays with sad eyes. She has the expression of a woman who has seen great pain.
Perhaps it was those eyes, staring from a newspaper page, that compelled Micheal Boyland to draw the picture in 1997. He was living in a halfway house, trying to stay sober. Drawing Mother Teresa's image was a moment of grace in a life that has been marked by pain and sorrow -- and redemption.
For years, Boyland was homeless, scrounging for food in dumpsters and back alleys from Minneapolis to San Diego. A chronic alcoholic, he has been in and out of jail more times than he can count. He has known the jeers of police officers who threw away his few belongings. He has known the frigid cold of sleeping under a bridge in a Minnesota winter.
He has been lumped into many categories: Homeless. Drunk. Addict. Nuisance. But at his deepest core, Boyland calls himself something else: Artist.
Boyland grew up in Osseo, where he graduated from high school and was a member of St. Alphonsus in Brooklyn Center. He had drawn pictures as a child but fell away from it after high school. He joined the Air Force in 1978 and was stationed in Vandeberg Air Force Base in Califonrnia. He married in 1980 and moved back to Minnesota in 1982. By 1986, he was divorced.
That's when I started drinking real heavy and using drugs. My whole life kind of fell apart from there. I wound up working in a junkyard for a while, living in the woods in an old schoolbus. I left the junkyard and became homeless.
I was drinking so much I sort of became insane. In 1991, I rode a bike from Minnesota to New Mexico, and from 1991 to 1997, I was homeless, a drug addict.
I ate my food out of the dumpsters. I lost all my ID. I had nothing. I had no glasses, no shoes -- and I'm almost blind without glasses. I was panhandling and all the other things that street people do. Aluminum cans get a dollar a pound out there . . . I spent it all on drugs and alcohol.
In San Diego, I was arrested 38 times in one year, just for being a street person. It was always dismissed. I was put into detox another 50 times. I was a drunk. I'm sure I caused a lot of problems. The police throw away your stuff. Once you're down to that level, nobody's going to do anything for you. They'll spit on you.
In 1997, Boyland hitched a ride on a freight train and returned to Minnesota. But his family wouldn't help him. He started living on the streets again. Around that time the first miracle happened. Ten years earlier, working in the scrap yard, he'd lost a necklace with a medallion of St. Therese of Lisieux that someone had given him. He hadn't known who she was. He thought the woman in the engraving was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The medallion fell off his neck and was run over by a truck. He searched all over but couldn't find it.
Then 10 years later -- I know this sounds crazy -- I'm back at the same scrap yard again, and I looked, and I saw this little, tiny silver thing shine like a laser beam right in my eyes. I dug it out, and it was the medallion! I thought, whoa, it's a miracle. God's trying to tell me something.
I still thought it was Mother Teresa then. I put it in my pocket and walked straight down to a treatment center. I checked myself in, got sober.
Boyland went through a 90-day treatment program and then spent six months in a halfway house. One day in September, he read that Mother Teresa had died. There was a two-inch square photograph of her in the newspaper.
"I was driven to it," he said. "That's what I used for the model. A lot of it, I had to add in with my own mind. I hadn't drawn a picture in many many years."
Boyland mailed the drawing to his brother Jim, who was living in Iowa. His brother had 1,150 prints made. Boyland signed them all. Meanwhile, Boyland found a job as a mechanic. He moved out of the halfway house into an apartment in downtown Minneapolis, near the Basilica of St. Mary. He had never gone inside the big church, though: "I was too much of a sinner."
Then he started drinking again and lost his apartment. He wound up on the streets.
One February day in 1999, he hit rock bottom. It was cold, and he had no jacket, hat or blanket. His shoes were falling off his feet.
I was sleeping under a bridge. It was so cold, I was frozen to the bone. I was sick. I was lonely. I had nothing going for me. No friends, no family. I had ruined everything. I was down to nothing.
That was the day the second miracle happened. It was the day he walked into the Basilica and met a woman who became his friend, Mary Fran Karanikolas.
That Saturday was "shoe ministry" at the Basilica's St. Vincent de Paul outreach. Karanikolas was a volunteer and leader of the Second Saturday Shoe Team, which gives vouchers to poor and homeless people for a pair of shoes at Kmart.
The sight of Boyland made Karanikolas feel physically wounded. "He just stood at the door, leaning in the door frame. It was almost like he couldn't sit down," she said. "He just looked so bad -- jean jacket, thin, shoulder-length hair. He was also very quiet."
I was very thirsty. They had a pitcher of water there. I took a Dixie cup. That water tasted so good. I ate a cookie. That's when i met Mary Fran. She had me sit down at the desk and tell her what was wrong. So I told he, and she treated me with respect, even though I felt so low, lower than and animal. It was like she didn't even notice that.
They didn't have any hats and gloves left, or coats. But Alfred [Alfred Yahr, a Liberian immigrant] -- he was the security guard there-- he must have overheard me talking to her. He gave me his coat that he wore to work that day. It was a really warm coat, a down-filled ski jacket. He had to drive home without a coat on that day.
And Mary Fran gave me a Bible and gave me a number to contact about some glasses. And she gave me the name of a place Catholic Charities runs for inebriates [the Glenwood residence in Minneapolis]. And she gave me a $5 bill so I could call my brother.
Just the respect and love that I felt from a stranger like that -- it reminded me of that story in Romans, where Jesus said, "I was a stranger, and you let me in .. Whenever you did that to the least of me, you did it to me."
So I was warm that night, with that coat, and with an old, filthy sleeping bag, under the bridge. I started reading that Bible.
Boyland did not return to the Basilica during Karanikolas' shifts. But he wanted to repay her and Alfred for their kindness. So he asked his brother to send a Mother Teresa print to the Basilica. His brother sent 50.
The next year, the Basilica dedicated its new undercroft, hanging Boyland's print in it and naming the room for Mother Teresa. Boyland lived at Glenwood for a few months. Then he moved to Watkins, where and old friend, John Wall, was running a ministry for former prison inmates and others is need, called Jesus Christ Eternal Ministries.
He helped out with painting, carpentry, and other needs. He also got sober and has tried to stay that way -- though he struggles with occasional relapses.
In Boyland, Wall said, "I've seen a gentleman, who didn't want to do anything but drink when he first came in, stop drinking and totaly turn around."
"I've seen marvelous changes," Wall said. "He really has grown tremendously in every area, especially toward his faith. He's very devout toward his Catholicism."
Karanikolas did not talk with Boyland for another year. In spring 2000, she gave a copy of the Mother Teresa print to Pax Christi in Eden Prairie, where she works as a consultant and receptionist. The print was for the church's Mother Teresa room.
Joan Karst, the administrative services director at Pax Christi, wondered what had happened to the artist and encouraged Karanikolas to find out.
Karanikolas tracked down Boyland's brother, who referred her to Jesus Christ Eternal Ministries. She called Boyland there. "It felt like Lazarus. We were glad to talk to each other." Boyland now wanted to "do something for the Basilica," she said. So that July, he and Wall drove up with a truckload of coats, shoes and Bibles for the St. Vincent de Paul program. One of the coast was specifically for Alfred Yahr.
"It's just like it just came back 100-fold," Karanikolas said. From there, Karanikolas became Boylan'ds regular friend and supporter. She persuaded an art store near the Basilica to donate boyland some leftover art supplies. She commissioned drawings and paintings. She introduced him to artists and other monks at St. John's Abbey, where she is a Benedictine oblate. One of those monks was Fahter Francis Hoefgen, guestmaster at the abbey -- a priest whose own brother had struggled with alcoholism and unemployment. Father Hoefgen became Boyland's confessor. Boyland had not been to confession in a long time.
The first time, this summer, it felt like the hand of God was on my head. I felt a rush through my body. It just totally cleansed me. I feel like I'm adequate to face God again, like I'm worthy. It's like a baptism, almost. Sometimes I get eaten up by guilt so bad, and the guilt is just lifted from me.
Boyland enjoys creating images of Jesus, Mary and the saints, often using pictures from books and other sources as his models.
"I feel like it's my service to God," he said. "I feel like I was called to do it. I wasn't called to be a monk or a priest. I don't feel drawn to do that, but I think I have to serve God. I should have been dead years ago, you know?"
Karanikolas siad she is constantly humbled by her friend's deep faith.
"He's told me he was the most infamous drunk in Minneapolis," she said. "I don't see that. When I see him, I see his faith and his heart -- and his trust in God. Through it all, he's always known that God has taken care of him.
"He brings God to me."
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| The Holy Face by Michael Boyland |
Michael's work can be seen in person at our gallery in Dassel, at the Basilica of St. Mary's book shop, and at other galleries across the country. Stop in to see his work anytime.
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| Our Lady of Guadalupe by Michael Boyland |
Our gallery is blessed by being a place where artists from all walks of life can show and sell their work. Our artists may not be famous people, but each one has a story and a reason for creating. We hope to add a few more of our artist's stories onto our blog over the next months and years.
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