We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence...
- Annie Dillard
Faryn Davis originally hails from the hills of western Appalachia, where she grew up in a rural mountain setting among cows, endless tobacco fields, abandoned apple orchards, and dirt roads. There she spent many days wandering and collecting leaves, tadpoles, bugs, feathers, nests, bones, vials of dirt, clumps of moss, scraps of paper, and other found ephemera and hoarding them away in handmade books and small boxes.
She continues to be a "collector of small powerful things" in her mixed media art which often incorporates found organic elements into illuminated shrine-like forms, resin paintings, and in her line of resin jewelry. Her recent works combine thick, poured layers of resin with misty painted scenes populated by birds, bears, foxes and other creatures in dreamlike settings, and real embedded objects such as grass, eggs, bones, and plants. They are inspired by the beauty and mystery of the natural world and are infused with tension, rest, beauty, and longing.
She pursued art from an early age and studied at North Carolina School of the Arts, in France, Italy, and Nepal, and received a BFA degree in sculpture at the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 2000. She now carries her line of jewelry in over 20 stores and galleries throughout the US, including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Seattle Art Museum. You can also find her at various indie craft shows throughout the country like the Renegade Fairs in Chicago, Brooklyn, and San Francisco, the Urban Craft Uprising in Seattle and Crafty Wonderland in Portland, OR, among others. She also shows her paintings from time to time, but you can mostly find them at G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle.
She also likes and is often inspired by: birds and ornithology, dioramas, road trips, narrow trails, pine trees, foggy islands, hot springs, maps, marching bands, tea, snow, tundra, autumn, blackberries, rosemary, dirt, farmy locales, iconography, ancient history, old-fashioned things, wooden spoons, relics, owl pellets, old photos, geology, small mammals, dreams, mehndi henna art, origami, and making fires.
She just recently moved back to Asheville, NC after an 8 year hiatus in the Pacific Northwest and now creates art full time at her home studio with her husband Eli, son Milo, and two enormous cats.
The photo above is of Faryn riding a large plastic dinosaur somewhere in NW Colorado.
