JENNIFER DAVIES

BIOGRAPHY

Jennifer Davies graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and spent a year in Rome as part of the European Honors Program. Among her mediums are printmaking, watercolor, murals, and wall hangings.

Her greatest enthusiasm is for papermaking, and for years she has produced pulp paintings and traslucent hangings. She has taught and studied papermaking and printmaking techniques at Women's Studio Workshop and Creative Arts Workshop.

Solo shows have been at Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, and Travelers Insurance in Hartford. She has participated in many group shows of printmaking and papermaking in the Northeast and nationally.

She is a member of the Monotype Guild of New England, the Erector Set, and Friends of Dard Hunter papermaking group.

ARTIST STATEMENT

One of the materials that has remained of great interest in my art making is paper. I produce my own of various fibers, cotton, linen, and abaca to make pulp paintings.

In the case of mulberry fiber, I cook and hand beat it to make long translucent hangings. I enjoy manipulating the papermaking chemicals and additives to determine the color, thickness, and the nature of the pieces.

I work with essentially a soup of paper pulp and coax it, pouring it on in layers and using stencils and squirt bottles to make the abstract imagery. The process is quite free and improvisatory, and I try to remain open to the developing patterns and rhythms before me.

The linen wetlap, used in the long pieces, has proven to be a perfect material for me to express my interest in surfaces that can be read as topographical, either as a close up or from a distance.

I am increasingly drawn toward patterns, either natural or man made, that result from successive processes, such as erosion, or accretions upon the earth. I have often turned to aerial views of the earth for ideas. Man made images such as the wild linear drawings of tar done by road crews, or obscured graffiti, I find also informs my sense of layering and patterning.

In all of my work there is the hope for a resolution that is unforseen, arrived at after laying down and covering up one possibility after another. I like the dance between me and the paper's response, and at the end, the surprise of the final image.

- Jennifer Davies