DAVID HOLLEMAN

1927 - 2020

HOLLEMAN, David Renowned Artist Dies at 93 Born at home on January 20, 1927, in Arlington, MA, died Saturday, September 12, 2020 after battling the complications of Parkinson's disease for years.

David cannot remember a time when he did not want to be an artist. Given his first set of paints at age six, he painted a mural on his family's coal bin! Gifted with a beautiful singing voice, he sang in the prestigious boys' choir at Emmanuel Church in Boston. He fell in love with the city in Back Bay, which inspired his abstract "city-scapes" for many ceramic mosaic murals. Traveling to Boston he also learned about prejudice as he was told, "Get up you dirty Jew and give me your seat." These experiences fired his curiosity about what it was to be different, or possibly a Jew. He became a self-taught scholar of Judaism, a central theme of his lifelong work.

After serving with the U.S. Army as the first occupation troops in Berlin, he attended the Boston Museum School, turning away from painting to ceramics. Although he won national prizes for his pots and exhibited throughout the United States, the medium limited his need for expression. Sgraffitoed ceramic tiles placed among the abstract city-scapes allowed him to make visual themes of human struggles from literature or the Bible.

These murals led to over fifty commissions for churches, synagogues, hospitals, universities and private collections in the United States, England and Africa. His largest commission was for the U.S. Army cemetery for the North African Campaign of WWII in Carthage, Tunisia. He then designed panels of brick carvings, a unique process of his own. Commissions required him to move to bronze casting, stained glass, fabric collages, and even redesigning existing synagogue buildings. Forty-two of his stained glass windows are at the Jewish Home for the Elderly in Fairfield, CT. Most recently eleven stained glass windows were given to the Skirball Museum of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, OH. The Boston Science Museum has his ceramic mural of the Aztec Calendar stone on permanent display under the Foucault Pendulum. He has exhibited throughout the United States, and individual pieces are owned by museums and private collectors.

For the past 12 years, David returned to portrait drawing, an early passion of his, where he could explore his design to portray the essence of human genius, aspirations and simply being. These colored pencil drawings come from his own vision, knowledge and wit. The portraits bring people to life and their uniqueness is enhanced by the backgrounds in which he placed them. Exhibitions of these drawings were held in 2014 and 2017.

David has lived in Lexington, MA since 1959. He married Barbara DeRocher in 1956 and his daughter Beth was born in 1962, followed by his son Michael in 1963, who tragically died of cancer in 2011. David is followed by seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

One can only remember the following:

Some people come into our lives,

Leave beautiful footprints on our hearts,

And we are never, ever the same.

The love we share will never end;

True love lasts forever.

A Memorial Service will be held at a later date, to be announced.