The History of Forest Boone Studio

After having had a spiritual awakening in 1991, Forest Boone quit his sales job, got in touch with his Shawnee roots, traveled out west, and began producing traditional Native American ceremonial art and reproductions of museum pieces, often using all earth-based materials. After realizing that he had been forever changed by that experience, he enrolled in art school at the University of Louisville earning his BA and BFA in the disciplines of fine art with sculpture as his primary discipline. Throughout his undergraduate experience Boone gravitated toward conceptual art, producing his second major body of work, quickly raising the stakes to large-scale sculpture, with themes of technocracy, the human condition, and feminism in the Post-Modern Age. The second sculpture he ever created was some 10 feet tall and 975 pounds. Whatever had happened to him in 1991 was here to stay, for The Creator had starting working through his hands. This was clear since he had never done anything artistic in his life until that spiritual experience in 1991.

While in graduate school at Indiana University, Bloomington, Boone and his sculptures made it into Central Park in New York; Ground for Sculpture Sculpture Park in Trenton, New Jersey; The Washington Monument Mall Sculpture Garden, in Washington, D.C.; The Falls of the Ohio Interpretive Center in Clarksville, Indiana; and The Smithsonian Institution's History of Science and Man.

It turned out Boone had a gift for sculpting convincing geological formations. This was recognized by the chief of production and publications at the Smithsonian, and Boone's life has never be the same since. After merging this gift, with the discipline of Fine Art, that led to his first United States design patent, which, in turn, led to the birthing of Forest Boone Studio and MuseumRock Products, in 1999. MuseumRock is an offshoot of Forest Boone Studio. The name MuseumRock is simply another division, an offshoot of the same studio, developed to create a distinction between the two mediums, bronze and stone.

Boone is an accomplished international sculptor. After having lived and worked in London, England and the island of Kauai he is back in Louisville focusing on what he loves most, the creation of bronze statues and memorials. Although Boone has never been it it for the money, he has now, inadvertently, worked on several projects with budgets in the millions of dollars. 

Artist Statement

"Immediately following an unforgettable spiritual experience, back in 1991, my vision profoundly changed. Literally, the way my eyeballs see the world has not been the same since. Whatever happened, whatever that was, is why and how I started making art and why I make art today. I live and breathe art. In fact, it is not optional for me. Creating art is just as essential as breathing is, for me. It is how I make sense of the world all around me.

"To be quite frank, if I didn't pray and meditate about my sculptures beforehand they would probably be considerably less than world class. But I do. That very thing, that Force, that Creative Intelligence that caused me to start seeing the world differently ... that's the "Thing" that is truly creating the art, not I.

"I am not confused about where my ability to make powerful art is coming from. The vision, the creativity, the power, the magic, if you will, is all coming from the Master Potter Himself - the One Infinite Creator. Just as I would not disturb a well-prepared flower bed in the sunlight of the spring, for the risk of disturbing the flowers that are invariably going to pop up, in all their glory, I do not get in the way of being a conduit, a channel for that invisible Force. As I sculpt, I allow The Master to work through my hands. I similarly allow the sculptures to "pop out" in all their magnificence."

- Forest Boone

Pictured below, Boone stops working long enough to snap a photo. What you see here is a 136-foot long sculpture of what is called an escarpment. Boone is calling this his "masterpiece." He completed this small mountain, if you will, for the widow of Charles Schultz, on the island of Kauai, in 2008. Every square inch of what you see here was based on Boone's original pencil sketch and is now a permanent part of the Navajo Indian memorial on the Hawaiian island.

Below, Forest Boone is shown with a before and after photo of a huge Limestone statue pedestal that he created under the MuseumRock brand. The 19,000 pound raw Limestone block was extracted from the earth in Bedford Indiana, hence the internationally known, Bedford Stone. We turned the raw Limestone into a statue pedestal for Pap John's International, which is located here in Louisville.

Historically, based on years of experience with large scale outdoor art, we have been sought out to restore and install bronze statues. We have also been known to fabricate large-scale art installations for themed environments, design and create large scale molds, sculpt larger-than-life monolithic rock fountains, fabricate naturalistic waterfalls (indoors or out), create site-specific installations for animal habitats, zoos and botanical gardens, as well as private garden commissions.

Our work can be found in more than a dozen museums across the United States.