Terri Boor's desire to repay the University motivated her to make a major gift for the naming of its new fine arts sculpture studio.

By Carol Olechowski

Sculptress Terri Cosma Boor uses chisels, hammers, rasps and sandpaper to form the stone figures, busts and animals that decorate her Loudonville, N.Y., home. Over the past two decades, though, she has fashioned something just as enduring: a relationship with the University at Albany that is helping to shape the future of its art program.

Boor, a native of Utica, credits her building-contractor father with instilling in her and her six siblings a love of the arts. "He was very cultured," she recalls. "I would sit next to him and watch him draw with blue ink on white vellum paper. Those drawings would remind me of the clouds in a beautiful blue sky. And he would hum the most beautiful arias. My father impressed upon us that, through music and art, we were hanging onto our ancestry. For us, the arts were almost a form of ancestor worship."

Today, Boor still looks to her ancestors for inspiration in her work. "My grandmother used to make the gold epaulets for the Italian army officers' uniforms. For St. George's Episcopal Church in Schenectady, I recently designed an altar cloth and vestments that drew upon that theme of gold," she notes.

The studio takes shape on the east side of the main campus, on the perimeter road.

Although she is an accomplished sculptress - her works range from human figures almost abstract in their simplicity to finely detailed, lifelike busts - Boor considers herself a student: "It takes three lifetimes to be a sculptor. You never finish learning. I'm just on my first step."

The learning process has inspired Boor to study with such notables as New York City-based artist Anthony Padovano, her mentor and "one of our foremost American sculptors," and with Henry Dispirito of Utica's Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute. That thirst for knowledge eventually led her to the University at Albany's Department of Art.

Boor and her late husband, Edward Milan Boor, came to Albany several decades ago; he later accepted a post with then-New York Gov. W. Averell Harriman. Recalls Boor: "My husband made me promise that, if anything ever happened to him, I wouldn't drop my artwork." After he passed away in 1978, "I kept my promise. I was working in my own studio at home, but I had become very lonely and melancholy. That was when I signed up for a class at the University."

At UAlbany, Boor found another mentor, art Prof. Edward Mayer, along with a whole new circle of friends among her fellow students. "Ed has helped me a great deal. And I've learned a lot from the students. They're wonderful. They come from all over the world, and it's fascinating to see how they express their different nations and cultures in their work," observes Boor.

In Boor's estimation, the University has created an environment that promotes both "a bond between nations and the exchange of ideas. The students' willingness to share their ideas and their spirit of cooperation are marvelous. Their work is just amazing. Of course, Ed Mayer has a lot to do with that. He's fantastic."

Boor's desire to repay the University motivated her to make a major gift for the naming of the art sculpture studio, now under construction on the east side of the uptown campus.

When completed in 2002, the one-story, 20,000-square-foot building will be known as the Boor Sculpture Studio. It will house sculpture and three-dimensional activity for the art department and its students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition to high-ceilinged individual studio/offices for faculty and graduate students in the Master of Fine Arts program, it will feature a beginning sculpture/figure modeling classroom and a group studio for sculpture majors. A media suite with video imaging
equipment, an experimental gallery/installation area, a three-dimensional design room, and a wood/pattern shop are planned. Other features will include a foundry/metal-working area with an overhead rail system and an outdoor work pad for assembling and loading large-scale artwork and material. The Boor Sculpture Studio will relocate facilities now housed in a leased building, two miles away on Railroad Avenue in Albany, to the main campus, a brief walk from the Fine Arts building.

Boor, who says she is elated that the studio will carry her name, hopes that it will "give people the incentive to do even greater work."

UAlbany, she adds, deserves support "because, through its professors and its curricula, the University takes an exceptional interest in the student body. Albany has such fine faculty and staff. I know many of them on a personal basis, and they're just terrific. They're the best."