Jennifer Davies And The Possibilities of Paper

A spread of brown tree bark with soft blue highlights is arranged along the back wall of City Gallery. At first glance, the bark appears to be a near-perfect simulation. The organic, weathered texture of a tree is replicated with precision.

But move closer, and it becomes clear that these fragments actually are an impression of the form. New Haven-based fiber artist Jennifer Davies has pressed short-fibered cotton into her personal collection of tree bark, pushing the pulp into its crevasses so deep ridges form around the pockets of the positive shape of the bark.

Davies’ wall-sized Out of the Woods commands attention in her solo show, Casting a Net, on view at City Gallery through Dec. 29 of this year. The exhibition draws on a range of work—all related to various methods of paper-making—completed over the previous year by Davies. Her installation represents the first successful departure from her practice as a mostly two-dimensional artist into a more sculptural and immersive realm.

Her installation is a mold—a trompe l'oeil print pulled from the contour of the subject—that reverts her material back to its source. The pulp she uses is processed from cellulose derived from trees and other fibrous plants. It now portrays its root, connecting the product and origin. Davies deftly conjures the feeling and natural textures of the forest, infusing this particular work with more accessible content for a viewer.

Interspersed between the vertical slabs of individually-hung pieces of bark are colorful fungi. Davies made these pronounced ledges of orange shelf fungi using silicone molds. A separate, smaller grouping of several pale blue fungi casts long shadows on the wall to the right.

Davies personally collected both the bark and the fungi; the former came from Western Massachusetts, from a plot of land that Davies has frequented since her early 20s. The rough shapes and rigidity of the bark complement the elegant curves of the fungi and together, they emphasize Davies’s ability to render distinct textures drawn from sources that are personal to the artist.

Out of the Woods also showcases Davies’s investment in fiber as the primary means of material and formal exploration, which is continued throughout the show. The artist manipulates different fibers in a variety of ways, often weaving traditional and innovative modes within one work. In many of the smaller framed pieces such as Game Plan, she combines white and orange thread, stitching together layers of porous handmade papers, ivory gauze, and sepia-toned tea bags.

The petite scale and dainty appearance of this mostly monochromatic work are matched in Doodled and Pimento across the room. Davies worked on these smaller pieces gradually, finding windows of time at airports while traveling, for example. Obsessively sewing and embroidering these elaborate works brings a sense of intimacy to the show.

Embracing a bigger scale, Shake Some Down and Tracing the Moraine are both over-sized sheets of handmade paper. For these pieces, Davies poured orange, white, and navy long-fibered pulp onto large screens. Spraying these screens with the powerful force of a hose produced the intricate, lace-like patterns of their surface.

Elsewhere, Davies alludes to the show’s title in a more direct fashion by incorporating literal nets—bird netting, wooden frames, and latticed fabrics—within her compositions. In Portent, burnt sienna, ebony, and off-white paper pulp cover contrasting layers of bird netting producing a soft gradient, whereas Drift fixes the fluid movements of an eggshell-colored gauze onto a dark background.

From Davies’s foray into a pressed-pulp installation to more conventionally-crafted swathes of fiber, Casting a Net offers a glimpse into the vast network of the material expressions for paper. The exhibition highlights how the artist responds to the physical possibilities of a single material to generate a multiplicity of new forms.

Casting a Net runs through Dec. 29, 2019, at City Gallery. To find out more about the gallery’s hours, visit its website.