Contributing Artists

Izzy Davis

Exhibition Statement as Preserved in the SUGS/SITE Archives:

Do clearcutters dream ofthe sounds trees make as they are sawed down in forests, the
same way l dream about the sound a tree might make in a forest l’m not at all in?

Flagging and Foraging explores material ancestry and synthesis. All material comes
from somewhere… like old-growth trees, felled to be manufactured and marketed in
commercial logging. Or alternatively, with the abscission of a ripened hull, respectfully
collected from the earthen floor, to be boiled into something new. Izzy Davis implores
viewers to read material with extra attention, and raise questions about intention,
process, and choice.

The grounds of Davis’s work are the peculiar sites ofhuman interventions into otherwise
untamed forest: clearcut fields where old-growth forests once stood, reliefs made by
pine beetles boring into soft phloem beneath bark. Alongside the natural world, purpose
is derived equally from construction and appearance. An image imposed onto a surface
is not limited to an obedient plane. Marks are informed by the grain and texture of a
surface. Layers of medium build up, pigments derived from foraged tree-materials are
mulled into paint, boiled into ink, or fired into charcoal. Gathered synthetic ribbon,
plastics, and paints are used in tandem with vegetation. Imagery is drawn from the
natural order of the world around, its forestscapes, fields, trails, and trees, and how
human hands tie synthetic materials into land.