Dec. 11, 1941 — Sept. 27, 2026
Cleveland
Stanley “Shawnee” Edwin Boyd died on Sept. 27, 2026, in Cleveland, Ohio. He was born on Dec. 11, 1941, to Ida Louise Mosedale Boyd and Edwin Oscar (E.O.) Boyd, in what was then rural Chevy Chase, Md. He was present during the transition of much of that area from farmland to suburban housing and remembered the conflicts that the transition posed. For example, he wrote, “When I was about fourteen years of age, the creek that ran through the woods behind my house … caught fire, chemical spills.”
This conflict between rural/working-class life and gentrification would become a theme throughout much of his life. He later reported: “I came to the South Carolina Lowcountry in 2003. In 2004, I settled in a cottage on Newcastle Street in the Northwest Quadrant of the town of Beaufort, the Historic District. I had the good fortune to take up my residence before gentrification replaced street theater with middle class trappings …‘Street Theater’ was effectively evicted by ‘the market.’”
His father, E.O. Boyd, died when Stan was in his teens. Stan recalled: “My father … made portraits wherever he happened to be … on the bus on his way to and from work, in church, portraits of the cashiers at the grocery while my Mom was getting checked out. E.O. would help bag up the groceries and leave a spot-on pen and ink portrait for the cashier.”
Stan was often with his father in his studio and learned to draw alongside him. As he described it, “I emulated everything that I saw E.O. do. I worked beside him in his studio in our house. I have been making portraits since I could hold a pencil.”
Stan earned a degree in American Studies from the University of Maryland and a graduate degree in Public Administration in Urban Development from American University in 1971. He then served on the faculty of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, teaching land-use planning and city architecture. After a 40-year career in architectural restoration, Stan moved to Beaufort. From 2013 to 2020, he worked at the Beaufort campus of the Technical College of the Lowcountry library, where he assisted students and was “artist in residence.” Thirty of his paintings and illustrations can be viewed on the walls and stacks of the library.
In 2008, he participated in the reconstruction of the bell tower at the Penn Center School, the site of one of the country’s first schools for freed slaves, on St. Helena Island. In 2020, Stan joined the maintenance staff at Hunting Island State Park, where he was a cherished coworker and steward of the park.
In addition to his work in visual art, Stan was a poet and musician. He estimated that he had made “hundreds of paintings and drawings, scores of sculptures … in wood, in bronze and copper,” as well as written “hundreds of songs” and three music theater plays. Many of his art works can be seen at shawneeonline.blog; his compositions can be heard at soundcloud.com/stanboydstudio.
Stan is survived by cousins David Mosedale and Tiffany Desabrais, former partners Linda Vettori, Jarrett Perry Boyd and Jaquelyn Markham. He leaves behind many friends in Beaufort, S.C., and from his time at the Walden School in Dublin, N.H.