A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST: DAVID LEE BLACK

ARTIST PROFILE
DAVID LEE BLACK

by Brian Goslow

Photographer David Lee Black’s resume is one of a well-lived and experienced life: he earned a BS in music education at the University of Missouri in 1983 and was a Tullaloughaun Residency Fellowship Recipient in County Clare, Ireland in 2012 and 2014; professional career highlights include serving as associate artistic director for Orchestrations Conceptual Art, Inc. since 1985; as a juvenile parole officer for the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services from 1987-2014; as an expressive art therapist with New England Expressive Arts Therapy; as a visual artist with Rhode Island’s legendary Big Nazo puppet troupe and as artist-in-residence at David A. Lang Studios in Natick, Massachusetts.

It was Lang who urged Black to contact me in early November to help publicize “Passage,” his then-upcoming exhibition at the Jewish Community Center in Worcester, Massachusetts. I received an email with a complete set of images from the show and its mission statement, which would prove eerily timely: “Where do we go when we die? Is death only another moment? Where do we come from? What exactly is this dream between birth and dying?”

The following day, Lang called me to confirm I had received Black’s email. A few hours later, he’d lose his life in a horrible traffic accident as he was returning home from the studio. In the aftermath, Black’s photograph of a smiling Lang in Ireland earlier in the month would serve as a memorial to the man and his soul.

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