Cultivating spaces for extraordinary artists
April Star Davis
Painting on metal or old wood, most of the things davis incorporates into
her art she recycles from her trips around the city …found objects turn
into fuel for driving transformation…what was once waste or was viewed as
old is now perfectly suited for art... davis often sands her objects and
materials with power tools & most paintings each contain several in one:under each finished piece can lie 6 others that did not feel “done”...
"I do not like new flat fresh surfaces," says Davis, "they are sterile & contain no history."
I was born in 1969 and raised in a hippie commune so saw many things at a
young age... one of my favorite people in the community killed herself, my
mother's boyfriend shot himself... what I saw was not always what a
young person should be seeing but made me savvy early on... I put what I
couldn't get out or figure out onto wood, canvas, anything I could get
my hands on.... blood is a recurring image, in the sense not of terror but
of beauty.... blood is a life source & giver and can stain your soul just
with its presence....
“ I use what I can find, ephemera of lives no longer being lived, old report
cards, passports, union records, little snips of a person's life... I
use them to preserve the story & make it into part of my own story because coming from where I do I don’t have the family tree and no documentation of where I’m from , so I’m trying to create it perhaps.”
"The test or words I use aren’t saying anything but an appreciation of form and shape of the various lettering and cultures"
