Isobel Davis Art
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NEW VIDEO
in the client gallery 
ART BY ISOBEL DAVIS - CLICK HERE
Glimpse Isobel's Art in an
​architectural setting

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​Beeline to Dinner to the land of Milk and Honey - the cookbook
Volume No. 1 (chapter one of others) presents recipes as a tool for regenerative world culture through mobilized Ethiopian American cuisine. A very tasty part of the pollination story from the Beeline to Dinner Art Installation. Available as in eBook soon in 2023
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​Isobel received a public commission for "Beeline to Dinner", connecting the importance of pollination and a healthy ecology to our multi-cultural dinner plate.  The project is from the Office of Art and Culture and SDot for Art Interruptions, 2018, in the Rainier Valley. Recently extended a second year, until October 2021. 
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Leave the busy mind behind and experience magical, meditative, fun floating ink on water, and making beautiful prints! Gather at  Inscape, the former INS building and travel through history to a space to make art 
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For more information go to AIRBNB EXPERIENCES
https://abnb.me/7v77UyxZPX?user_id=73997954&s=2
Location: Seattle’s International District
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​Maker's Day at the Museum of History and Industry in South Lake Union, Seattle,  was fabulous and by all accounts a success. This was an all-ages cyanotype workshop at MOHAI on Saturday July 28th, 2018, taught by me and Lynette Klein who assisted.  
https://mohai.org/event/maker-day-cyanotype-sun-prints/
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Edges of Water launched my year long art investigation by an artist seeing and acting, of the activity in the boundary zone at the edge where water is found.  This began in a collaborative performance at Seattle's International Daipan Festival, in collaboration with Daipan Butoh collective including principals Sheri Brown, Helen Thorsen, Joan Laag, guest Butoh Master Mushimaru Fujieda, visual artists Kate Jessup Patti Bowman and numerous Butoh and art participants. July 12th 6pm at Myrtle Edwards Park.

Cyanotypes made with beach wrack, things left by the high tide such as sea grass, fine shells, mini drift wood pieces, as well as site rocks and sand.
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Submergence an installation by Isobel Davis
 
​Opening night celebration  Friday, September 15 
Open 9/15, 9/17, 9/21, 5:00 -9:00pm
9/24 (12 - 6pm)
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Inscape Gallery
815 Seattle blvd S., Seattle, 98134

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Oyster Labyrinth, video projection,  and cyanotypes Contemplate your inner pearl, and the rich resources worth preserving in our oceans. Installation, video projection, art.
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#oceanimmersion, #yourinnerpearl,  #findyourpearl, #oystershelllabyrinth, #protectouroceans, #pearlessence, #pearlofgreatprice, #seattleinstallations, #seattleartopenings

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Rainier Beach Art and Music Festival, BAAMfest 2017

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A sprouted labyrinth made out of compost socks and a variety of nutritious and edible seeds, broccoli, radish, alphalfa, etc. An art installation in collaboration with the Rainier Valley Food Bank to reflect on what it takes to feed and be fed. #walkthesprouts #foodsovereignity  

News received July 6th
"Isobel Davis:
Thank you very much for your interest in the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture Public Artist Roster. Congratulations you were selected to be included on this roster!" 
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First in the new podcast series by Laura Allen with Two Ponies Press. "Original Lines Podcast episode I" features an interview with Isobel Davis.  https://twoponiespress.com/podcast/original-lines-episode-1-art-food-mushroom-logs-artist-isobel-davis/

Public Art Boot Camp
​I am honored to have taken the intense training for working as a public artist in April 2017. 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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Round About Series -
A client commissioned this work. She took five pieces as gifts to a family in Norway this May.  They were well received by the recipient who says: "These are beautiful, and even more in real life... very special..." Inner-Anne 


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Sweet Spot in the Ecotone
Exhibit at Windermere Mt. Baker 
This show has been extended through May. Please come take a tour.
Two pieces have been bid on, there are still many pieces available. Please drop in any day during business hours M-Sunday, through March.  Excited to announce that 5% sales of art from this exhibit will be going to food justice projects and the Rainier Valley Food Bank

RendezView 
Get acquainted with my art in your space\
 
Get an "art pick-me-up" delivered to your door
Rent original art for a fraction of the value of the art for 2 months renewable ​

​Get a new view every few months
Yearly subscription art rental package includes 4 exchanges or re-rentals.  

Yes you can purchase the art. Part of rental fees can be applied to purchases.

RendezView art rental is currently available only for metro Seattle area, except by special arrangement.
Ask for details at the RendezView tab contact form. 

Transience - LA Photo Curator's Exhibition - 2016

​http://www.laphotocurator.com/transience-curator-adam-finkelston/group-exhibition/15
Three of my cyanotype images were 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.



I am happy to have two Cyanotype/water color pieces in this exhibit during October 2016
​at Potter Gallery, WMSU

One of my pieces was used in the news release to market the show.


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BAAMFest at Rainier Beach in July, 2016
The Folks at Rainier Valley Food Bank invited me to design a super large Mandala to sit next to their festival booth for the community to fill in with colored lentils. All ages went to work. The Food Art Person that I am, it was a perfect pairing. This animated GIF shows the project with time-lapse and little and big hands. 
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"Making a Statement" Saturday, April 9th, 2016 6:00pm-9:00pm BallardWorks, 2856 NW Market St., Seattle 98107 

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"Making a Statement"

​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.

Isobel Davis Art Statement

Life’s transitions happen in the sweet spot of the ecotone, a zone in biology where ecosystems intersect leading to explosive biodiversity and originality. The encaustic collages imagine sanctuary in the disruption of these zones. Nature’s creativity at the edges is an
instructive counterpoint to gloom-and-doom climate scenarios with accelerated transitions where the vulnerable are at risk.

Incorporated into some of the collages and standing alone as a body of work, my cyanotypes capture the energy of a vibrant ecology, referencing the food supply, and standing as a metaphor for the social ecology. In my studio practice, I choose mediums that force me to partner with nature’s unpredictability. Watercolor on paper is loosely controlled, wax melts on a hot plate in relaxed abandon, the out-of-doors cyanotype process records the variable effects of sun and weather, all engaging my responses and reactions, resulting in work which embodies the energy and aliveness of a transition zone I call the ecotone workspace. 

​Photo of encaustic collage pieces by Isobel Davis.
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 Recent Cyanotype work at
Collin's Pub
February-March  2016

Reception: First Thursday Pioneer Square, February 4th
526 2nd Ave, Seattle Hours: 11:30 - midnight, every day.
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Six cyanotypes
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The Never Ending Poem: Ecotone Poetry, ongoing, online
Never Ending poem
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Now Exhibiting Cyanotypes and Encaustic collages from the studio of Isobel Davis
August through February 2016  -  Davis Wright Tremaine LLP  

​Suite 2300
777 108th Avenue NE

Bellevue, Washington 98004-5149
By appointment
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Art Rendezvous


Get acquainted with my art in your space

 
Framed works for rent by subscription or for trial


Contact Isobel Davis Art isobeldavisart@gmail.com
http://www.isobeldavisart.com/cyanotypes.html



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Studio newsletter update   

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Energy of the Ecotone 

Exhibiting cyanotype and encaustic works throughout the Row House Cafe, 1170 Republican St, Seattle, 98109, 206-682-7632. Opening at the South Lake Union Art Walk in December, 2014 through February 2015. Open during restaurant hours. 

NEW EVENT: Collaboration with Butoh
Butoh in the Ecotone
a food and art performance
March 7, 4-7:00pm
$30 includes food, drink
www.brownpapertickets.com
More.....
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The Painting Center is Turning 21! 

"Ecotone Germination" is being exhibited in this show commemorating 21 years of the center. The Painting Center, West 27th St., New York, NY, November 25 - December 20, 2014.
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Food for Thought: On Garden Time I 

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Lip-Smacking-Good.blogspot.com

Lip Smacking Good Recipes for Community Crops 
Jerusalem Artichoke Har
vest and art Installation 

Saturday November 8th, 11:00, 2014
Bradner Gardens in Seattle, Washington
Cyanotype and encaustic medium on cloth and copper

This art installation signifies the intersection between instant tech time and garden time. The use of technology such as QR Codes and URL's, is juxtaposed with garden time, the cycle of seasons, and waiting for an annual harvest. Technology can’t speed up nature's calendar. 

The event: after harvesting and food sampling, participants did an installation of , “Food for Thought: On Garden Time, Phase I", a hanging some of the 13 tiles that were made to represent the first 13 recipes created for the Jerusalem Artichoke recipe blog. Sustainability can taste good. After distribution amongst participants, 50#'s was donated to the Rainier Valley Food Bank, with recipes. 

The Jerusalem Artichoke project is about making community crops more accessible by connecting community to recipes with art. This is an ongoing participatory project. Contribute recipes at
Lip-Smacking-Good.blogspot.com.

   


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Shifting Ecologies 

June - July 2014
Reception: Thursday, June 19th, 6-8pm
Pannel Discussion: Friday, June 20th, 6-8pm
The Painting Center, W 27th St. NYC
"Earth's Floatsam in the Ecotone" Cyanotype, 23"x30"

Statement:
“Earth’s Flotsam” examines life in transition in the ecotone, a zone where ecosystems intersect leading to explosive biodiversity.  Nature’s creativity at the edges is an instructive counterpoint to doom-and-gloom climate scenarios.  My cyanotypes record the variable effects of sun and weather, embodying the energy and aliveness of this transition zone. 

Give and Take
installation with 5 city trees
TK Art of the City Festival
August 2nd, 2014

Intertwined and connected like a grove of trees by
the Mycorrozal fungi and roots that equalize resources,
carbon and nitrogen, traveling to and fro  

Repurposed shirts, bees wax, oil pastel, cyanotype, wire

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Ecology Global Network 

"Earth's Flotsam" appears in the EcoArt section of Ecology website along with other artists from the exhibit Shifting Ecologies. It appears in part 2 of 5. http://www.ecology.com/2014/08/15/shifting-ecologies-environmental-art-part-2/


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Waxhouse Drips Eternal,  2014

Insights by the artist

My title “Waxhouse Drips Eternal” juxtaposes death with a symbol of eternal existence. The last line in Sylvia Plath’s bee poem,  "Stings", compares death of the queen bee with domestic oppression, “Over the engine that killed her—The mausoleum, the wax house,” whereas "Drips Eternal" refers to the eternal stores of honey, the byproduct of the sacrifice, created and ever dripping from the hive. 

Our interspecies exchange with honey bees is evidenced by venerable appearances in art, mythology, the sacred, social customs, architecture, poetry and language dating back 10,000 years. Yet honeybees remain feral and impossible to domesticate. Instead, we manipulate the partnership. They don’t pollinate crops for us, they collect pollen for their hives but we place our crops in the pollinator's path.

And so it is with Plath’s poem, where the queen bee is in a predictable state of decline, yet through the poet’s pen, becomes a feminist symbol of an oppressive existence, steeped in the rhetoric of vulnerability, loss of power, sacrifice and ultimately death. This poem belongs to a series of poems referencing bees written shortly before her own death. The metaphor of the hive invites comparisons about domestic female oppression, but to complete the metaphor, one can look at the historical female’s characteristic role in building community, in creation and procreation for the perpetuity of the human species, represented not only by the social organization of the hive but the legacy left after the ultimate sacrifice of the female worker bees life, the creation of honey, the natural world's only imperishable food supply. 

Today, the headline story is about unscripted death of honeybees, as populations decline, imperiled by our actions (pesticide use, over development, and imbalances in the environment causing a proliferation of parasites and diseases). This is critical because insect pollination services are valuable to our food productivity. Bees are responsible for as much as ⅓ of the perishable foods that we eat. Ironically, the honey they produce is imperishable, the only earth sourced food that doesn’t decompose.  

Lifting oppressive practices affecting vulnerable populations, both human and invertebrate (to combine analogies) is critical to allow creative productivity to flow such as bees gift of honey, the eternal gold.




APRIL 16TH - MAY 14, 2014 CREON GALLERY 238 EAST 24TH ST, 1B, NY, NY 10010 646.265.5508


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WAXHOUSE DRIPS ETERNAL, everlasting food stores of the vanishing species, 2014 Isobel Davis
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"WAXHOUSE DRIPS ETERNAL" installed at Creon Gallery

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Bee-line to the Land of Milk and Honey 

Installation art created in an artist designed and run workshops at the Sustainability Conference, Principia College, Elsah, Illinois, March, 2014. Participants embellished artifacts and assembeled an installation in support of pollinator popularions that included a "Pollinators Garden", a "Portrait Gallery of Endangered Fruits and Vegetables", and a poetry writing session for "Sweet Talk in the Swarm".
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