Born into a creative family in San Francisco in 1945, Best attended the College of Marin but his studies were interrupted when he was drafted by the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany. Upon his return he enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute where he earned his BFA in 1974 and his MFA in 1975. With his friend Larry Fuentes, he participated in the Institute’s annual soap box derbies, and his stylized vehicles were the logical extension of the sculpture he’d been making with cast porcelain and found objects. Selling his work never interested Best, rather it was the way it could be used to forge meaningful relationships with people in crisis: cancer patients, people with AIDS, and those with learning disabilities. Working together on art cars was an obvious way to build connections with people of various backgrounds, interests, and skill levels.

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Best made his Houston debut in 1984 as one of the artists featured in “Collision: Independent Visions,” an exhibition curated by Ann Harithas at University of Houston’s Lawndale Annex that’s remembered as a catalyst for art car culture and a benchmark moment in the growth of the city’s art scene. In the decades since, he’s returned to the city numerous times, driving in several of the annual Art Car Parades and assembling the elaborate decorative façade of the Art Car Museum on Heights Boulevard.

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Best built his first temple at Burning Man in 2000, "The Temple of the Mind,” a tribute to Michael Hefflin, a member of Best’s crew who was killed in a motorcycle accident a week before the event.  Seven more temples under David’s design and direction followed at Burning Man between 2001 and 2014, some rising as high as 120 feet. Additional temples have been built in Coral Springs, Florida with survivors of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and in Derry, Ireland with Protestants and Catholics who left their grievances aside to work together. In 2018 he and the Temple Crew spent a month transforming the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery into a temple for their exhibition “No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man.” His most recent temple, “Sanctuary," was built in 2022 in Coventry, England as a memorial to lives lost during the COVID epidemic. The Houston temple is dedicated to departed members of Houston’s creative community but Best stresses that the temple is a gift to the community which may extend its purpose to memorialize anyone’s individual loss.

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The annual residency is central to the Orange Show Center’s art and education programming. It allows guest artists to create new work with the support of community and to share insight into their practice through workshops and lectures. Past artists-in-residence have been sculptor and musician Lonnie Holley (2022) and conceptual sound artist Maria Chavez (2023).