ABOUT THE ARTIST

S. Birch Black (they/them), also working as S.B.Black Arts, is a Boston-based visual artist. Drawn to making art for as long as they can remember, S has always been fascinated by fantasy and imagined worlds. By profession, they are a scientist and engineer whose lifelong fascination with cosmology, astronomy, and biology occasionally surfaces in their visual vocabulary—not as subject matter, but through symbolism, organic forms, and sense of wonder. Beneath the dreamlike imagery runs an ongoing exploration of the uneasy relationship between the natural world, scientific discovery, human well-being, and the systems of extraction and profit that so often place them at odds.

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S discovered a love of collage through a studio art assignment and gradually found a way to combine it with acrylic painting and pen and ink into a process that feels uniquely their own. Their recent work layers these media to create dark, fantastical images that emerge from the subconscious—images that feel unearthed rather than invented, inviting interpretation without insisting on a single narrative.

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Every featured piece is a traditional artwork, created entirely by hand before being photographed and presented digitally. The physical process of cutting, painting, drawing, and assembling is an essential part of the work—and although the finished images may appear digitally manipulated, no generative AI was used in their creation. They come from one delightfully squishy, organic brain, aspiring to the peculiar feeling of dreaming of electric sheep.

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[Artist portrait created by overlapping self portrait and artwork]