Ardyth Davis : Resume

Resume of Ardyth Davis	Education Invitational Exhibitions Juried Exhibitions Awards and Grants Personal Statement Corporate Collections Publications
Education	Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC
Selected Invitational Exhibitions	"Patterns of Vision," James A Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, PA "Playing with a Full Deck," Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC and Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services "Skyworks," Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, MA and tour of USA "Quilt Festival Tokyo '91," Tokyo, Japan "New Energy in Contemporary Quilting," Hand Workshop, Richmond, VA MAF/NEA Grant Recipients, Life of Maryland Gallery, Baltimore, MD "Knots and Nets," Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY and USIA African tour "Fabrications," Missoula Museum of the Arts", Missoula, MT "Quilts Contemporains Americains," Museums in France, Turkey, USA "Old Traditions/New Directions," Textile Museum, Washington, DC
Selected Juried Exhibitions	"Quilt National" '93, '89, '85, '83, Dairy Barn SEO Cultural Arts Center, Athens OH "Spotlight:" '95, '94, '89, '88, '83 (ACC Regional Shows) "Beyond the Quilt," Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA "Lloyd Herman Selects," Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA "Craft Art," Textile Museum, Washington, DC "The Year of American Craft," The White House, Washington, DC
Awards and Grants	Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation/National Endowment for the Arts Regional Craft Fellowship, 1989-90 1990 Virginia Prizes for Visual Arts-Crafts, Second Prize Award of Excellence, "Quilt National '85," Athens, OH First and Third Awards in Fiber, Textile Designers' Awards, Bank of Virginia Craft Invitational, Norfolk, VA Second award in Fiber; Potomac Craftsman Award; Creative Craft Council Biennials, Washington, DC Finalist, Hines/ACC Artwork Competition, Cincinnati, OH
Selected Corporate Collections	Dartmouth College, Hopkins Art Center, Hanover, NH IBM Corporation, Gaithersburg, MD Marriott Corporation, Washington, DC and Kansas City, MO Kaiser Permanente, Washington, DC area (4 sites) Xerox Corporation, Leesburg, VA Cannon Faulkner Architects, Washington DC US. Embassy, Djakarta, Indonesia Health South, Birmingham, AL The Oliver Carr Company, Washington, DC Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Bethesda, MD University of Virginia Medical Center, Charlottesville, VA Levi Strauss & Co., San Francisco, CA Augusta Medical Center, Staunton, VA US Embassy, Islamabad, Pakistan
Published In	"The Art Quilt", Robert Shaw, Hugh Lawter, Levin Associates, Inc., Southport, CT 1997 "America's Glorious Quilts", Dennis Duke and Debroah Harding, Macmillian Company, New York, NY 1987 "Quilt Digest Number 5", Michael M. Kile, ed., The Quilt Digest Press, San Francisco, CA 1987 "Quilts Japan Number 2", Nihon Vogue, New York, NY 1986 "Quilts Contemporains Americains", Valpress, Rumilly, France, 1984 "Old Traditions/New Directions", The Textile Museum, Washington, DC 1985 "Macrame, Creative Design in Knotting", Dona Z. Meilach, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, NY 1985 "American Craft", April/May 1985

Personal
Statement

My fiber work began with knotting, and I continue to do small knotted pieces. I like the beauty of the individual knots and rigid texture of the construction, and I like the freedom of being able to build almost any shape, flat or sculptural.
I like color, particularly all the subtle gradations obtained when mixing and intermixing dyes and paints. I work with color gradations instead of color patterns because my primary interest is in texture, which is s likely to be obscured by patterning.
I began to make pleated silk quilts as a way of integrating color and texture in a larger format, one that would be faster to execute than knotting. The surface of my work has become more complex over the years, and my current work has a tightly pleated and manipulated surface, sometimes with stitching lines added before the pleating process. In addition to constructing pleated silk quilts, I also paint color washes on cloth or paper, tear it or cut it up, then restructure it to build a textured surface.
The landscape has been a recurring image in my work, the textures and formations of rocks and corals being recent influences. I am interested in creating atmosphere with a piece, inferring rather than delineating. The earth is a constant reminder to me of the mysteries of existence. It has witnessed eons of change, change which speaks eloquently in its rocks, land and sea forms. I am intrigued by the irony of using a soft, flexible medium to depict the hardness and rigidity of these forms.