By Gail McCarthy
STAFF WRITER
—
GLOUCESTER — As valedictorian of the Gloucester High's Class of 1946, David Black left Cape Ann to study science on a full scholarship at Wesleyan University. Two years into college, after meeting a sculptor on Wingaersheek Beach, he would change his major to art and embark on a path of study that would lead to what can be called a "monumental" career.
Today, he has about 40 public sculptures of a gargantuan proportion across the world, from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Nagano, Japan.
Just a few months ago, he installed his latest commission in Washington, D.C. In another commission, he won the international contest to create a sculpture in Dayton, Ohio in tribute to the Wright Brothers first powered flight.
Yet his story begins in Gloucester, where he grew up. And he's returned to his hometown, set to present a special program discussing his work tomorrow at Gloucester's Sawyer Free Library.
Black's life's path has put him in touch with artists of all kinds, and in many parts of the world. Yet he remains drawn to Gloucester.
"Gloucester had everything for a kid. I remember going down Whittemore Street to the Gulf oil pier to swim," Black recalled during an interview this week while staying in Annisquam. "It had quarries, too. I used to swim in Walker Hancock's quarry.
"My family always went blueberrying in Dogtown. I met Marsden Hartley up in Dogtown," he says. "He and another painter were walking into Dogtown as I was walking out with my pails of blueberries. I never saw a painter in Dogtown and then here's these two guys with their easels and canvases strapped on their backs with black berets of course."
Later, Black would see a Hartley painting of the Dogtown series in a museum in New York City.
The son of a lawyer, John Black, his grandfather, also John Black, worked at what was called the anchor foundry at the end of Whittemore Street. His brother is the late artist John Black, who retired in Lanesville where he opened a gallery (his mother was Doris Merchant Black).
But his local roots go even wider, and deeper.
"The Tarr that founded Rockport was a relative on my mother's side and the Tarr sent to Ipswich jail as a witch was another relative," he said with a smile.
That Black had a promising future was evident when he received the local coveted Sawyer Medal as an eighth-grader in 1942. When he graduated, he was offered several scholarships, including Ivy League colleges, but he opted for Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., because it was a guaranteed four-year scholarship and also because it was the recommendation of his high school English teacher, Hortense Harris.
"She was famous for her students getting into college," said Black, who named several who went on to prominent careers, including his classmate Hilton Kramer, who became the art critic for the New York Times, as well as James Mello, who wrote biographies, including those of Gertrude Stein and Walker Evans.
"A lot of good people came out of her classes and they never forgave her. But some also loved her because she was so encouraging," said Black.
During the summers in college, Black worked as a lifeguard at Wingaersheek Beach. And it was on Wingaersheek Beach that he met sculptor George Aarons, who had a studio up on top of a nearby sand dune, with whom he would play ball in the early morning before his lifeguard shift started.
"He had an impact on me," recalled Black. "I was obviously some kind of a romantic. I had done some paintings on the beach after hours."
After college, Black took a job teaching at a Vermont prep school, The Putney School, where he would meet a famous American artist, Alexander Calder, whose daughter was his student.
"He came to my studio and he crushed my hand when he shook it," recalled Black. During the Korean War, he was drafted into the Army, into the Alabama National Guard "where they put us Yankees into basic training," said Black, who would become an artist-in-residence. It was during this time that Jasper Johns would hang Black's photography show at the army unit in Fort Jackson outside Columbia, S.C. Johns would become a prominent American contemporary artist.
Black turned to sculpture later in his career when he went to the Skowhegan School of Art for the summer. For 12 years, he made ceramic sculpture.
Later he would receive fellowships that took him to other countries.
He worked in bronze casting in Mexico with a fellowship grant. He received a Fulbright scholarship to Italy where he spent a year and a half in Florence making sculpture and casting bronzes. His two children, Margo and Eric, were 5 and 8 at the time. He later received a two-year fellowship by the German government to work in Berlin, a city where his son would settle as an adult.
In his own country, Black won an "Individual Artist Grant" from the National Endowment for the Arts. Around 1980, he began immersing himself in the realm of the monumental abstract sculpture. He started working in industrial aluminum, particularly after he discovered that a Columbus, Ohio, aircraft company that made fighter planes, the F-14, was selling material at surplus prices. "To make the wings they used a one-inch thick plate of aluminum, 101/2 feet wide and 28-feet long, weighing 3,000 pounds," said Black, who lived several years in Columbus and taught at Ohio State University. "When they stopped making these F-14s, they had hundreds of plates leftover. I thought 'gees maybe I can cut that stuff.' So I hired a semi to bring back two loads of plates, 24 plates. "I found I could cut them with a power-driven concrete saw, the kind they use to cut up city streets, and that's when I started making this kind of public sculpture," he said. "For the next 15 years, I cut plates. I cut them in various shapes, including lots of curves, and rigged up a hoist and made four huge sculptures — with no prospective buyers. "I was in my element," he recalled, "but financially I was depending on my teaching salary." Many of his early abstract public sculptures had names relating to Gloucester — such as "Breakers," "Coast Line," "Fort Side," "Hammond Rotunda" and "Sand Circle." Chester Brigham, a Gloucester writer, remembers Black when they were young men at the beach. "He's very much Gloucester, although he's been away many years," said Brigham. "One thing that impressed me is that he incorporates Gloucester names and themes into his monuments and sculpture." Now 82, Black has not slowed down at all. In the next year, he has a public sculpture called "Fire Dance" commissioned by Fort Myers, Fla., that will likely be installed this winter. "I try to have something going up every year, but you have to win the competition," he said. He has won public art commissions from three international competitions in Nagano, Japan; Berlin and Dayton, Ohio — for the Wright Brothers memorial, the largest piece Black has done. The sculpture, titled "Flyover," is 140 feet long and 47 feet high. Lights are installed in the work, whose concrete bases go 8 feet into the ground. "It took three cranes, three trailer trucks and lots of muscle to put it up," said Black. He calls his public sculpture a kind of "proto-architecture" because of its architectural elements. "I have to think about the public," he said. "I like the idea of bringing people in, letting them walk through, have their lunch and see the sculpture from underneath. "And almost every one has some kind of seat. "This recent one in D.C. has a love seat for two or four people," he noted. "I want them to enjoy the piece from every angle." If you go Who and what: David Black talks about his public art. When: Wednesday, Aug. 25, at 7 p.m. Where: Friends Room of the Sawyer Free Library, Gloucester. How much: Free; the event will also include a short film spotlighting Black's work. The event is free and in the Friend Room of the library.
