Episode 6: Art & Tree Planting with Bethany Davis

Today I sit down to chat with the woman behind the podcast art, tree planter and tree checker Bethany Davis! Bethany Davis is 21, currently living in Toronto, Ontario. She is studying Drawing and Painting at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) University making art heavily impacted from her time within bush camps in rural Alberta. Her first drawing series Follow the Trees, showcased on the podcast, brings into discussion our interaction with the land through ink illustrations.

Currently, Bethany’s work has moved into more of a critical lens of the reforestation industry in her thesis work The Cultivated Orientation of the Natural Infrastructure where she looks closely at the manufactured landscape. Accrediting images of the land to observe how nature responds to mass destruction of deforestation, questioning what elements could remain? Within these drawings, she pictorially expresses the silent, yet the resilient force of life. Where plants such as Hog Weed, Stinging Needle, wildflowers and fungi can act as a scab to cover an open wound on the earth’s surface. Working in correspondence with the drawing series Bethany is collecting Tree Planting maps to make hand-bound art books. Her current piece Treatment Area uses thirty collected tree planting maps. Each has been used, carrying with it, the story of planters among the dirt, bleeding ink and wrinkled paper. These maps show the layout of a cut block, an empty chunk of land following the removal of a forest. Illustrating how the land can be organized through formed bodies, coloured mass, and curious annotation. Poems are layered on top, with transparencies creating the context to the artist and her primordial exchange with the land.

Just so you are aware of where a lot of Bethany's educated opinions come from, here are links to her source material: “Is the Bark Beetle All Bad?” The Secret Wisdom of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary Balance of All Living Things: Stories from Science and Observation, by Peter Wohlleben, Greystone Books, 2019, pp. 77–86. “Creatures in Your Coffee.” The Secret Wisdom of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary Balance of All Living Things: Stories from Science and Observation, by Peter Wohlleben, Greystone Books, 2019, pp. 35–52.

Call out to planters! Bethany is looking for block maps! There is a link on her website to donate block maps to her creative project (see link below)

LINKS

Website: https://davis-bethany.format.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bee.davis_/

Book to check out: The Secret Wisdom of Nature https://www.amazon.ca/Secret-Wisdom-Nature-Extraordinary-%20Observation/dp/1771643889/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=CjwKCAiA-P7xBRAvEiwAow-VadxV6EIfnLg4MSTSnUWivjIpzIOWgGZAOBM2nFD-%20ZGVwY2jRdso9sBoCRqEQAvD_BwE&hvadid=324888448280&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9061009&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=11157256988861346976&hvtargid=kwd-647253172304&hydadcr=2438_10293367&keywords=secret+wisdom+of+nature&qid=1581277487&sr=8-1