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Graphic artist Dawn Black is enjoying Baton Rouge’s freshly energized arts scene.

The shared constitution between an artist and his or her work is a telling commonality. And when confidence harmonizes the composition and the creator, regardless of the subject matter, the connection is a powerful one.

Thirteen years after graduating cum laude from LSU’s BFA program, a decade since her study at the Scoula di Graphica in Venice, and nine years post-MFA—awarded by the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History—painter Dawn Black grounds that connection back in Baton Rouge.

Black returned to her home state when her husband Andrew, a pediatric ophthalmologist, took a job at the Pediatric Eye Care Center in the summer of 2009. The move was a mixed blessing for the artist, who retained frustrations from growing up in a less culturally conscious Louisiana. Though Black would be close to family, she had already exhibited in Berlin, San Francisco, Atlanta and Miami, among other places, and was faced with the challenge of continuing that momentum far from any traditional art meccas.

“There is so much more going on here than there used to be,” Black says. “I feel like there is an art community to be a part of.”

One step Black has taken toward joining that community is applying to the Baton Rouge Gallery. Only months after she sidled back south, she was accepted into the gallery’s artist membership, prompted, no doubt, by her strong body of work and impressive resume. A highlight is her Concealed Project exhibition at the Curator’s Office in Washington, D.C. Through networking the global diaspora of emerging artists, Black was able to show in the micro-gallery space repeatedly tapped by publications like Art Voices and Art Forum as source for new blood.

“I was in the MFA program at Iowa with Jiha Moon and her husband Andy Wilson, who are both represented by Curator’s Office,” Black says. “Moon introduced me to Andrea [Pollen, the director], and she decided to exhibit my work.”

The results were favorable and thoughtful reviews in Art Papers, Art in America and the Washington Post and a feature in Where Magazine.

The Concealed Project married Black’s global perspective with her native influences to produce a series of 7 1/2” x 5 1/2” drawings depicting the many ways people mask themselves. The summary is an alienating space shared by carnival revelers, veiled models in haute couture, women in burkas, painted geishas and masked soldiers. There is an appealing tension, even superficially, in such juxtaposition, but the underlying social critique gives the work real weight. Black uses an Oscar Wilde quote to further articulate the series: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

“I read a great deal, and my work is influenced by myths, parables and fiction from many cultures,” she says. “I was particularly struck by that quote, since it speaks to society’s innumerable constraints and practices, and of a disguise’s ability to liberate the wearer from cultural expectations, paradoxically revealing her true character.”

This statement gains additional poignancy when it is heard firsthand, as the 35-year-old’s subtle demeanor and delicate posture seem to canopy an assertive and exacting persona. Likewise, Black’s work has its own liberating duality, simultaneously elegant and demanding.

In one article published after the Curator’s Office exhibition, critic Kristin Capps commented, “From a bank of character drawings, she creates larger morality plays—drawings in which incongruous figures are paired, the results stark and usually sexual or threatening ... In Black’s work, the surreal is sobering—people aren’t who they say they are, but what they pretend to be.”

Black has been awarded another studio term at the McColl Center in Charlotte, N.C., beginning in January 2011, but before her departure for the East Coast, she will debut in the Baton Rouge Gallery’s June New Members’ Group Show along with metalsmith Mary McBride and multi-media artist Sarah Wiseman. Black’s contribution to the show continues her direct questioning of socio-political standards and will be a refreshing, self-assured stance.

“I want viewers to experience a sustained questioning, to wonder at the figures’ identities,” Black says. “I want them to wonder at the nature of the relationships depicted in relation to their own biases [...] and experiences and come away with a new awareness, fascination or, unfortunately, disgust of the diverse society in which we live.”

Certainly, the continuity between Black’s conceptual focus and technical skill will make that connection more alluring for viewers and the resulting current it creates a powerful one.