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The second issue
Examining ecological edges, what happens at the point of change inspires me. It's the sweet spot where lots of creative explosions and inventiveness happens. It impacts the food supply. It also describes the social ecology where transition ignites new life. This edition: hands-on mandala making with lentils, more food security jazz at lip-smacking-good.blogspot.com and Bradner Gardens, 5 art exhibits in 3 states, and poetry projects which invite audiences to contemplate metaphoric hunger, thirst and and emotional sustenance. |
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Public Art Boot Camp
I am honored to have taken the intense training for working as a public artist. This opportunity was awarded to 35 applicants by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, who provided 34 artists, engineers, fabricators, program managers, to speak with us, in-person consultations, and a public art tour. |
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BAMFEST SUMMER FESTIVAL - JULY, 2016
BAAMFest, an event celebrating the multicultural South Seattle neighborhood of Rainier Beach in July, 2016
with Elise, Lily, Sam and other good folks at Rainier Valley Food Bank
BAAMFest, an event celebrating the multicultural South Seattle neighborhood of Rainier Beach in July, 2016
with Elise, Lily, Sam and other good folks at Rainier Valley Food Bank
I've been loving art that engages community around the topic of food security. When I got the email from Elise from the Rainier Valley Food Bank inviting me to design a large Mandala to fill with colorful lentils and rice for their booth for BAMfest, an art festival in Rainier Beach, I was quickly on board.
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This animated GIF shows the project with time-lapse. Notice the little and big hands.
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Butoh in the Ecotone March at Row House Cafe, Seattle, WA Performance was a collaboration with Sheri Brown, Haruko Crow Nishimura, Alan Sutherland at the Row House Cafe, a space that held my cyanotype art on it's walls, in a show curated by Erin Mahler. photo credits go to Bruce Clayton Tom, Wendy Simmons Photography, or Isobel Davis |
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Food Security is more than morsels of food... Attendees responded to questions on the inside of the cards... "Like an apple blossom for a bee pollinator" What do you hunger for? "Like a flicker tasting every tree in the forest" What would fulfill your dreams? "like a butterfly for a field of milkweed blooms" What do you thirst for?" |
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Slide show of BUTOH IN THE ECOTONE
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LIP-SMACKING-GOOD • 2016 Update on the Jerusalem Artichoke Project at Bradner Gardens
Urban Crop demonstrating food security - connecting crop to community through recipes and art. This years art card with recipe was shared with the Rainier Valley Food Bank. After delivering 72#'s of sunchokes and the food bank, and sharing the recipe, they printed the card up in the newsletter. Recipes to warm the soul. newsletter http://eepurl.com/bTWWE5 blog lip-smacking-good.blogspot.com
My art recipe card appeared in the Rainier Valley Food Bank Newsletter, March 2016
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Sneak Peak, Recipes at
lip-smacking-good.blogspot.com |
Updates from Lip-Smacking-Good.blogspot.com
Art projects continue. While tiles hung two years ago grow worn and weary, new installations of fabric and rebar fenders to defend the crop form basketball attacks.
The blog? We are broadening our reach to include wild and volunteer foods such as nasturtium, nettles and dandelion, with video demonstrations with Tilth expert Carey Thornton who is skilled at spotting edibles.
Updates from Lip-Smacking-Good.blogspot.com?
The 2017 postcard/recipe accompanied our donation of 70# of sunchokes to the Rainier Valley Food Bank. Our card and article was printed in their newsletter. http://eepurl.com/bTWWE5
Harvest 2017 will be in February. Please contribute recipes to the blog, and come to our harvest gathering!
Art projects continue. While tiles hung two years ago grow worn and weary, new installations of fabric and rebar fenders to defend the crop form basketball attacks.
The blog? We are broadening our reach to include wild and volunteer foods such as nasturtium, nettles and dandelion, with video demonstrations with Tilth expert Carey Thornton who is skilled at spotting edibles.
Updates from Lip-Smacking-Good.blogspot.com?
The 2017 postcard/recipe accompanied our donation of 70# of sunchokes to the Rainier Valley Food Bank. Our card and article was printed in their newsletter. http://eepurl.com/bTWWE5
Harvest 2017 will be in February. Please contribute recipes to the blog, and come to our harvest gathering!
Interview: How did my art come to embrace social and metaphoric themes related to food?
Paradox of Rice, cyanotype and encaustic wax on rice paper
I have always expressed my care for family and friends through food, as well as enjoyed the creativity and aesthetics of color, flavor, cultural explorations, drawing from myriad cooking traditions from my travels, and my few years of experience as a cook on the
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high seas. After my children left for college, my empathy grew for the world's subsistence farmers across the world facing a changing climate and weather events and politicized seed sources and the potential for food to become political arose. The concern wove into my art as I began to speak about sustainability, in Eat with the World project which included a meal, the most common meal is rice, working with the lexicon of sustainability and moving on to bee pollinators. The world seemed abstract so I soon found meaningful involvement here at home.
Several projects at my P-Patch community garden and some involvement with Rainier Valley Food bank ensued. I did a fundraiser one year, created a community crop for giving the next few years, and created a community art project at their booth this year. |
Sweet Talk in the Swarm, reclaimed fabric, xerox, encaustic, string, reclaimed metal
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Cyanotype Invitational Exhibit at Western Missouri State Missouri, Potter Gallery
I was privileged to be selected to participate in a cyanotype exhibit at Western Missouri State Universities Potter Gallery, outside of Kansas city. The exhibit included many large and beautiful examples of cyanotype work. I saw from photos shared with me, sculpture, wall hangings and framed pieces. I was happy to discover that the gallery used one of my cyanotypes in their news release to promote their show! |
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Transience, L.A. Photo Curator October, 2016
,Happy to have 3 cyanotype images selected to appear in L.A. Photo Curator's online exhibition'Transience", an International themed competition curated by Adam Finkelston, Posted October 4, 2016, see page 15.
http://www.laphotocurator.com/transience-curator-adam-finkelston/group-exhibition/15
http://www.laphotocurator.com/transience-curator-adam-finkelston/group-exhibition/15
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Green Home Tour Art Exhibit in newly constructed green home, NOCO 7 on the Seattle Green Home Tour. April 2016 Susan Cole, curator Sabranie Coyne , Realtor host |
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Making a Statement
Exhibiting my Encaustic Collage in a group show at at BallardWorks, April, 2016 Artwork and Artist Statements from Artist Trust EDGE graduates, 2013-2014. Participating artists: D.Lisa West, Andie Styner, Ellen Hochberg, Isobel Davis, Mary Ashton, Anita West, Susan Derrick, Louise Hankes, Kip Kania, Melissa Koch and John Webster. D. Lisa West, Anita West, currators MY STATEMENT: http://www.isobeldavisart.com/artist-statement.html |
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7 Mixed Media Cyanotypes Colin's Pub, February & March 2016 Brian Lane, currator |
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DAVIS WRIGHT TREMAINE LLP, Bellevue show and artist talk
Many of my cyanotypes and encaustic collages were hung on the walls at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. We had a lunch artist talk and tour.
Boris Gaviria, Curator (an attorney and artist) and Terra Holcomb Curator
Many of my cyanotypes and encaustic collages were hung on the walls at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP. We had a lunch artist talk and tour.
Boris Gaviria, Curator (an attorney and artist) and Terra Holcomb Curator
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RENDEZVOUS WITH ART travels to architect Carolyn Geise's farm: Maxwelton Aerie Farmhouse Retreat and Alpaca Farm
Rendezvous with Art is my rental policy for framed artwork. Carolyn rented several art works, trading a few out to try additional works in her farm house before choosing works to purchase. Several have a permanent home in the rustic feeling bedrooms and bath.
Rendezvous with Art is my rental policy for framed artwork. Carolyn rented several art works, trading a few out to try additional works in her farm house before choosing works to purchase. Several have a permanent home in the rustic feeling bedrooms and bath.
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Maxwelton Aerie Farmhouse Retreat and Alpaca Farm maxweltonaerie.com/
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WHAT'S NEXT? SKETCHING SKY AND CONSTRUCTION, Sea grass exploration, cropped compositions, Dinners
Issue I January 2015
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Energy of the Ecotone: Cyanotype of Isobel Davis at Row House Cafe, December - April 2015
Butoh in the Ecotone: Butoh performance will include
Sheri Brown, Alan Sutherland and Haruko Crow Nishimura explored Energy of the Ecotone, with costumes and interactive project by Isobel 
Row House Cafe, is exhibiting a large number of my cyanotypes in a show, Energy of the Ecotone, a visual exploration of the edge effect, the creative diversity of the boundary zone and it's impact on the food supply, embodied in imagery and artistic process.
Special Event Butoh dance trio Sheri Brown, Alan Sutherland, and Haruko Crow Nishimura interacted with Isobel's paintings and wore her art in Butoh in the Ecotone an art and food performance. Music, food tastes and drink included. more about Butoh here December Art Walk At the opening we experienced a very active evening as part of the SLU Art Walk on December 5th. On view through April 12th. 1170 Republican St, Seattle Hours: 7:30am - 10pm weekdays, 9am- 3:00 Saturday and Sunday. All works are for sale. See recent exhibitions here 
Connected by fungus
root skirts, wax and repurposed shirts
Seattle Street Festival: the installation, Give and Take
I accepted a last minute invitation to do an outdoor installation for a street festival in pioneer square Seattle that introduced work on the theme of how the Mycorrhizal fungus connects us, like our invisible web of thoughts. The installation included tree wraps, waxed paintings that wrap around the trunks of the trees and down from the branches, with biomorphic shapes, and wire sculpture chains as well as root vases. See more photos here 
Roots-up in vases at TK Festival
Sustainable food lexicon project
Walk this Way is the Sustainable food lexicon project. Tactile word tags are crafted out of cloth and wax depicting the fears, actions and aspirational qualities related to food sustainability.
The 12/13 iteration at Inscape Open house is a social experiment to see what participants will build from the collection of words. They are invited to choose, a term that reflects something they feel a connection to and ranks important, and hang from a collection of branches. 119 participated. 2/3rd chose qualities such as nourish, celebrate, plenty over the pragmatic words like compost, grass fed, open source seed and the fewest selected were words depicting threats, like hunger, drought, monoculture.
See more here |
Conference workshop on Sustainability and bees
Beeline to the land of Milk and Honey was designed as a 3 part socially engaged art workshop at Principia College's sustainability conference in March 2014. The result was an installation in support of bee pollinators, drawing attention to the importance of bees and the honey bee project at Principia. Participants assembled blooms with messages about what harms pollinators and actions that help in “Pollinator’s Garden”. see photos
They drew additional images to grow the “Portrait Gallery of Endangered Fruits and Vegetables and things reliant on bees” see photos and expressed their poetic selves incorporating the bee lexicon into their poetry about life in “Sweet talk in the Swarm”. see photos
Take the honey with the milk, drink of it before the rising of the sun, and there shall be something in thy heart that is divine”.
-Berliner Zauberpapryrus Workshop examples: warm coaxing sunshine teases out the mad bees in her bonnet Love is like honey Are we not all beekeepers Or angels like bees? Sacred essential Flies in the face of reason That we destroy you Buzz off Mind your own beeswax Papparazzi Highlights: Working with participants, art students, faculty. Moonlighting each evening at the Campus Inn for lively discussions with innovative sustainability role models such as Vincent Stanley of Pategonia, Dr. John Hausdoerffer on environmental ethics and social justice, Euphrates institute sponsored Dr. T.H. Culhane of Solar C.I.T.I.E.S. and Steven Mills of Climate Reality Projects (Al Gore). Adding another dimension, Quantum Physicist Dr. Laurence Doyle, royally twisting my concept of ecological time.
Explore more here: 
In October, I continued my Sunchoke project: Lip Smacking Good Recipes for Community Crops. We gather annually to harvest and share tastes and donate.
This year, we installed art tiles on the fence
to draw attention to QR codes that connects smart phones to
the blog for recipes.
The essence of this project introduces a community crop to a neighbor through a recipe blog, by QR code on art tiles. The recipes are also printed for the food bank to distribute.
Please contact me if you would like postcard art sent to you for submitting your recipe for the Jerusalem Artichoke (aka sunchoke) blog. See recipe blog here See event photos here 
mailing listPlease let us know if you would like to opt in or out of future newsletters, event announcements.
[email protected] |
Eco Painting show & panel talk The Painting center in NYC
In June, I participated in Shifting Ecologies, a show of painters talking about ecological
transitions the earth is currently experiencing. Currated by Marianne Van Lent of The Painting Center in Chelsea, NYC. I was grateful to attend the event and meet many artists and eco art patrons. Highlights: the panel discussion of interesting folks. Eco-artist, social scientist/anthropologist, shaman. I loved the stirring discussion and the feedback on my work. Now the entire show is online at the EcoArt online website. Shifting Ecologies, exhibit and catalog, The Painting Center, West 27th St., NY, NY Ecology Website Showing: "Earth's Flotsam" appears in the EcoArt section of Ecology website along with other artists from the exhibit Shifting Ecologies. See part 2 of 5 link to online exhibit 
December at the Painting Center
"Ecotone Germination" also traveled to the December exhibit at the Painting Center in Chelsea, NYC.
Waxhouse Drips Eternal
encaustic collage on repurposed shirts
An encaustic collage on repurposed shirts, whose title is a nod to a line in a Sylvia Plath poem, Stings, and juxtaposes death and sacrifice to the eternal stores of honey, the only everlasting food substance.
Waxhouse was exhibited in May at Creon Gallery in NYC in the exhibit “Feral Objects”, curated by Peggy Cyphers and Lucio Pozzi. link to read more
Artist Trust Auction
An encaustic vessel made with cyanotype on rice paper was selected for the Artist Trust Auction. As a pre-auction warm up, I was lucky to be asked to help at an event held at the home of Bellevue Arts benefactor John Shirley, amongst his amazing art collection.
Voices of immigrationIt's wonderful to have my studio at Inscape Arts in the International District of Seattle. We opened a very interesting exhibit, art pieces that reflect on the experience of immigrants. A Federal historic immigration building now art studios, it is a living history book of human stories. My studio, was appropriately, "the storage closet".
See Voices of Immigration 
WebsitesCurrently, I have 2 websites. For a focus on the community work, I created the new projects site: isobeldavisprojects.com
For all fine art collections and event updates, my art site remains the main hub: isobeldavisart.com Isobel Davis Art is also doing work under artPLUS+Us, for socially engaged participatory projects involving multiple artists and community. 
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Beeline to the Land of Milk and Honey installation is being created at a sustainability conference on a college campus in the Midwest.
Please feel free to connect with me at any
time, a studio visit, an online conversation, or suggest a community connection
and point out additional opportunities. Funding is needed to move these
projects forward and I am always considering options. Here’s to hope for you all for a new year full of steps forward, health, artistic discoveries, joy and light.
NOTES AND MUSINGS
Art that furthers dialog around a changing ecology is timely. My current theme is the ecotone. In ecology, this is an edge, a place of transition. At the boundary one finds rich biodiversity, profound originality, effusive creativity and new life. I also consider this as an inspiration for the personal experience of transition and creative growth. Like the butterfly effect, where flapping butterfly wings in South America affect the weather in Texas, I am also mindful of the impact our thoughts and individual actions have on the world. The biosphere instructs us that we don't live in a vacuum. I am interested in these ideas in terms of sustainability and the world food supply. My studio practice follows suit as I weigh the carbon impact of the materials I use and work to make choices that include many repurposed materials and low-toxic supplies. Some of my projects are more pointedly socially focused with the unpredictable element of community participation, but I feel that all art has a social effect when viewers take it in and it synthesizes in their thought experience. My thinking is aligned with this quote from Albert Camus:
The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world… there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.
Albert Camus
NOTES AND MUSINGS
Art that furthers dialog around a changing ecology is timely. My current theme is the ecotone. In ecology, this is an edge, a place of transition. At the boundary one finds rich biodiversity, profound originality, effusive creativity and new life. I also consider this as an inspiration for the personal experience of transition and creative growth. Like the butterfly effect, where flapping butterfly wings in South America affect the weather in Texas, I am also mindful of the impact our thoughts and individual actions have on the world. The biosphere instructs us that we don't live in a vacuum. I am interested in these ideas in terms of sustainability and the world food supply. My studio practice follows suit as I weigh the carbon impact of the materials I use and work to make choices that include many repurposed materials and low-toxic supplies. Some of my projects are more pointedly socially focused with the unpredictable element of community participation, but I feel that all art has a social effect when viewers take it in and it synthesizes in their thought experience. My thinking is aligned with this quote from Albert Camus:
The aim of art, the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and responsibility to be found in every man and in the world… there is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person who has known and loved it.
Albert Camus
*Pictured in the top banner: "Gateway to Infinity" encaustic cones from the Butoh piece: "Divided By Zero" on view at the Toshiro Kaplan Building in 2014
Photo Credits:
Tano Ahn, Neil Buckland, Isobel Davis, Andrew Parsons
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 206-300-2362 USA
Copyright © 2015 Isobel Davis, All rights reserved
Isobel is an artist at Inscape Arts in Seattle, WA USA
Tano Ahn, Neil Buckland, Isobel Davis, Andrew Parsons
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 206-300-2362 USA
Copyright © 2015 Isobel Davis, All rights reserved
Isobel is an artist at Inscape Arts in Seattle, WA USA
