West Windsor Arts Council begins the new year with a new executive director. Arin Black brings her passion for the arts and her experience in art, literature, music, film, and fundraising to her new position. “Most of my adult life has been spent working with the arts in some form or fashion,” says Black, who succeeds Eduardo Garcia, who has retired.
“I believe that everyone benefits from the existence of art makers, even if they don’t utilize the arts on a regular basis,” says Black, who will be working three-fourths time in her new position. “The impact that a song has to give us comfort in times of tragedy, or the way a painting can inspire, it filters through and shines a light on the very act of being human.”
“I’ve seen how the arts help us understand the world around us more fully and more deeply, they nourish us,” she says. “Everyone I’ve met here has been really kind and committed to the organization. My goals include getting more people in the community involved.”
Black was born and raised in southern Ohio. “I’ve always been interested in the arts,” she says. “As a child I would entertain myself for hours drawing pictures and making up stories to go along with the images.”
Black also wrote and performed as a child. “I’ve participated in the arts throughout my life,” she says. “I took every art class available to me in high school and then utilized the services of community arts programs to learn even more.”
She began attending theater, ballet, concerts, and performing arts when she was young. “My mother made sure that we took trips to Dayton and Cincinnati to see plays and the ballet,” she says. “My mother has been involved with crafts my whole life. She embroiders and makes beautiful quilts.”
The family later moved to upstate New York, near Buffalo, where her father worked for General Motors. “My father is an engineer and has a terribly logical mindset,” says Black. “I credit him for the organizational skills I hope to bring to the management end of the West Windsor Arts Council and the West Windsor Arts Center.”
Her brother works with computers and her sister is a registered nurse, mostly labor and delivery, in several hospitals in the greater Philadelphia area.
Black studied creative writing at a women’s college in Roanoke, Virginia. “I minored in art and was so lucky to be able to study art history in Paris,” she says. “Being surrounded by arts was a visceral experience. I would spend every dime I had to buy an exhibition galley.” Her favorite was an exhibition created just before World War II.
Black then lived in New York City and worked for Better Homes & Gardens and DC Comics. She later worked with Gabriel Media’s “Woman to Woman and Prison to Prison” project, a national film tour that screened the documentary “900 Women” to 25,000 individuals in prisons and community forums throughout the country. She lived in a 26-foot Winnebago for most of the time. Her project coordinator position is how she learned to work for a non-profit organization.
One of the tour stops was New Orleans, and she loved it. Black attended University of New Orleans on a fellowship beginning in 2002. She received an MFA in creative writing in 2006.
Black was living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. Although it missed her house by three inches, she was without power or water for many weeks. She remembers driving around in the dark and having to stand in line to get ice.
Black was the associate director for the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival for 10 years. The name is deceiving — the organization actually has many events throughout the year. The main festival in March includes 85 presentations featuring theater, a book fair, master classes — and even a shouting contest. Saints and Sinners, a GLBT event held every May, benefits New Orleans AIDS Task Force to focus on HIV prevention and treatment. The rest of the year is filled with community discussion groups, master classes, and more conferences. Black developed and managed an annual operating budget of $300,000 and was responsible for all financial record keeping.
During those years Black was also a field producer for Brave New Media’s “100 Days for Change.” She found and interviewed individual subjects, filmed, downloaded, and logged all footage, and worked with the parent organization to create the campaign thrust.
She was also an associate with Gulf Coast Housing Partnership in 2008 and assisted in securing $1.3 million for low-cost housing initiatives within the greater New Orleans community.
Her background includes programming and writing grants. “I like the challenge of linking with the goals of an organization,” says Black.
“My sister moved to Philadelphia many years ago to row and to attend graduate school at Penn, so I’ve visited often,” says Black, who left New Orleans to devote time to her book, a 256-page young adult novel called “Girls Like that are Dangerous.”
“It follows two sisters, Lila and Eve, during the six months after their mother’s failed suicide attempt,” Black says. “It’s not yet found a home with an agency.”
Black says that the book is more about being a teenager than bereavement. The girls are 12 and 15, and one plays field hockey. Black, who never played field hockey, played lacrosse in college.
Black learned of the West Windsor job opening through Philaculture.org, a business-to-business website that provides information, resources, and services for the professional cultural community of greater Philadelphia and a non-profit cultural job bank for people looking to work in a creative environment.
“I was specifically drawn to the organization’s focus on arts across the disciplines and its multi-cultural offerings,” she says of the West Windsor Arts Council’s job posting.
Although she was invited to Philadelphia by her sister, she has stayed for love, and has no immediate plans to move to New Jersey. “For now, I’ll be staying in Philadelphia where my partner has roots, although I really like New Jersey, so one never knows,” says Black. Her partner, Kevin Cohen, is a speech pathologist in Philadelphia.
“The city and the surrounding areas have such a great mix of nature and culture,” says Black. “I personally live within walking distance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Fairmount Park.”
“I still do fiber craft and have toyed with ideas surrounding installation art for years, she says. “For a recent birthday I asked all my friends to participate in a kind of community art project called ‘Please Show Me How You See Me,’ where I asked each of them to create a kind of portrait of me, with the idea that our identities are shaped as much by the people around us as they are by what’s within us.”
“It was fascinating to see what each person created (and how, by their own contributions, they provided me with a better understanding of who they were.) My sister, brother-in-law, and nieces made a cake with my face on top and then took pictures eating it. My friends, talented filmmakers and designers, made me a movie, someone else decorated a mirror. It just goes to show that everyone is an artist.”
