I was born to two loving parents who were both very well-rounded. My mother and father both saw fit to expose me and my brothers and sisters to as many aspects of the arts as they could. This meant that I visited museums, attended plays, operettas, concerts, lectures, took tap , guitar, drum and piano lessons, Columbus Boychoir, and Saturday art classes as a child. I remember my Mom especially encouraging me to examine the details in every piece of artwork, image, or even cloud we spied and the seriousness, yet joy with which she approached the arts - herself a dance teacher.
Yet as a young adult, as I contemplated college and career choices, I decided not to pursue an education and career in the arts - the area where I had spent so many years of sweat, joy and fulfillment, but instead chose to pursue a career as a medical doctor following in the footsteps of my namesake and uncle, Daniel C. Moss, who was Dean of the Howard University Dental School and the first African American maxilla-facial dental surgeon in the South-East. A noble pusuit, but hardly the place where my passion lay.
Down the road I'd find a dilemma. I reached a point after toiling with the somber prospect of studying for 4 more years in medical school only to work countless, sleepless days and nights on end in the oh so sterile hallways of a hospital , that I figured I must've taken a wrong turn somewhere and I started to question my course. It was during these months I began to see quite clearly that I had chosen a path that did not reflect who I really was, nor who I aspired to be.
I've always enjoyed traveling. I've had opportunities to travel around the world and in my travels around this time, I began to seek out artists. I felt a need to connect with artists everywhere who I'd likely never "just happen to meet". This led me to many out-of-the-way places, perhaps the most notable of which had to be a small community about 2 hours North of Miami, Florida called Belle Glade.
Some friends of my family knew I was an artist and on a trip to miami demanded that I make the two-hour trek to this small farming community up the road. It was in this small, migrant farming community that I met Donald Neal, the most amazing artist I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Tucked away in a modest studio was this slight, unassuming, late-thirties-ish auto-mechanic/artist extrordanaire (wavecap and Jheri Curl to boot). In his studio I saw the most amazing on-canvas creations imaginable before, or since. Jaw-droppingly life-like pieces that turn atheists into believers. No, seriously! I can't talk about that experience without gushing.
He sat with me for hours and talked about how his mother was a migrant farm-worker from Haiti who worked in the cane fields all her life. How he as a child-prodigy had to learn how NOT to outshine the White children in his art classes, or else invoke the bitterness of a racist teacher and the scars and sadness he carries with him because of it. Even how as an adult he has been black-listed from many of Southern Florida's Juried exhibitions because his work so consistently stands above other entrants'.
As I sat and listened and absorbed, I had to wonder how it could be that with work as awe-inspiring as his, that he was not known the world over. Furthermore, what might his affect have been on me had I met him years earlier, or on other artists given an opportunity to meet him? The more questions I asked, the more I began to realize the need for BlackArtConnect.com.
Years would pass and I'd join my brother William and other members of my family as we'd build the largest African American-owned website on the Internet:
www.HBCUconnect.com. As of the date of this blog, that site has more than 1.2 million members who are Black College Alumni, Students, Staff, Faculty and High School Students. In my role at HBCUconnect.com, I serve as VP, Business Development. After years spent successfully growing a business and thriving online community, I decided it was time to create a platform especially for my fellow artists and the African American Art community as a whole. For too long we have been told that a career in the visual arts is of no reward. Our urban school districts are cutting funding annually, leading to a lack of resources and teachers and our poor and disenfranchised children suffer first. We are a colorful community whose stories of triumph and adversity have always been expressed in our art and artforms, and BlackArtConnect.com will do it's part to ensure that the legacy is continued!
The BlackArtConnect.com logo is meant to embody the ideals of our online community which are Solidarity, Diversity and Activity. Solidarity - among all facets of the art community. Diversity - the range of prespectives, talents, resources, information and people who are a part of this community. Activity - the notion that artists create art and no matter what one's contribution to the art world, it begins with Activity first.
This is BlackArtConnect.com!
Posted By: Daniel Moss
Thursday, September 11th 2008 at 2:16AM
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