A World of Innocence and Adventure
by Lauren Hakimi via The Provincetown Independent
In art school, students said Lacey Black’s work was too feminine. They were wrong.
Black plays with a pair of wings she constructed for a performance.
Photo: Agata Storer
Black’s paintings and installations transport the viewer into a realm of girl-coded animals — rabbits, horses, butterflies, cats, dolphins — plus UFOs, whales, and goddesses who represent compassion. Black describes her use of feminine animals as “a call” to “slowing down, receiving, and being soft and gentle — or quiet.”
Black grew up in Sewickley, Pa., a Pittsburgh suburb. She was the type of girl who wanted to be a good student but couldn’t suppress the urge to doodle. She earned a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. from SUNY Purchase in New York. Other students said her work was too feminine, but even back then she was smart enough to know this was impossible. After graduating from Purchase, she stayed in the area. She calls Mount Vernon, N.Y. home and came to FAWC after a mentor advised her to apply for the fellowship.
Fine Arts Work Center visual art fellow Lacey Black performing at FAWC Friday in December.
In her studio, Black is wearing brightly colored mismatched earrings, a long keychain of pink beads clipped to her necklace, and a smock that she says she likes to paint in because it’s light and pink. She is drinking green tea, and on her desk sit an essential oil diffuser and a water bottle with stickers of a giraffe and a transgender flag.
In addition to paintings, the walls of her studio display dreamcatcher-like objects such as a translucent red pouch holding an acorn and a heart-shaped padlock attached to light pink frills. The work, with its unabashed girlishness and free associations, suggests that it was made by someone for whom the everyday and the spiritual are deeply intertwined.
