Author: Davin
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I made these drawings for the second Swash & Serif typographic and lettering art show in Toronto in 2016. I had a large drawing from my Dots series in the show but I gave away these cards at the show. The cards are Victorian-era bereavement calling cards that would have been used by people at the time to write a small note while they or the recipient were in a period of mourning. The cards are roughly 3.5 x 2.5″ with a heavy black border printed some unknown years before I found them in a junk shop. The drawing and…
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In 2015, I created a site called Amateur Escapist that I meant to function as a quarterly collaborative art zine based on my experiences with similar projects online in the early 2000’s. The first release First Words included nine artists (including myself) and I was blown away by the work submitted. For a variety of reasons, AE didn’t go beyond that first “issue” but I still have hopes of reviving it one of these days. Assembled Dots and Feelings Davin Risk for Amateur Escapist 01 : First Words, 2015, digital collage A realization that I always move towards assemblage and…
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It’s mid–June in Eastern California. The Arizona and Mexico borders are equally close. With the daytime temperature locked at around 114°F, the obvious choice is to drive out into the middle of a wide expanse of rolling amber–coloured sand dunes. This is our 20th anniversary trip*. We’re driving a semi-planned route through the deserts of California and Arizona. We have spoken about being in this landscape since shortly after we first met. Before we could even drive, we wanted to see this bizarre, harsh, and beautiful environment. We haven’t been disappointed. Despite the incredible dry heat that pushes against you…
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Let’s travel down roads. We’ll find places and they will be ours for moments. Let’s get to where the land lays out in front and behind us — where there are places we’ve been and places still to see. I have only been driving for a few years*. No teenaged backroads joyrides. No college road trips that weren’t at someone else’s whim. No coming of age cross country journey. I still have the nervous habits and low endurance of a novice behind the wheel. Highways are white knuckle zones so we take the long way there. Wherever there is, we find the…
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It was July 4th in Denver, Colorado and our kind friend Ross was playing tour guide and driver. Leaving the 92°F city streets behind us, he explained that we could literally drive to the top of a mountain. Denver, already the “mile-high city” at 5,280 feet looks out on a vista of peaks including 14,265 foot Mount Evans. Apparently constructed in something of a tourism war between Denver and neighbouring Colorado Springs, the Mount Evans Scenic Byway is a grand American convenience — a smooth paved road that loops its way up to just a few feet below the mountain’s…
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^ Starlings used to nest in the eves of our old apartment. The birds (along with a few squirrels and the near-feral neighbour cats) are keeping our backyard view alive. The vast majority of those birds have been Starlings. The European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris) is widely derided as a pest bird — like weeds on the wing. They were introduced to the United States in 1890 by Eugene Schieffelin (a member of the American Acclimatization Society) as part of the poetic/naive gesture of bringing “the birds of Shakespeare” to Central Park. Starlings now number in the teeming millions from the…
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^ The wonder of childhood feels like this in my memory — rapid flashes with the occasional moment of brilliant clarity. When we speak about childlike wonder we are drawing on a time when wonder was as innate as breath. For children, wonder is practically key to their survival. Wonder is synonymous with a child’s fluid acquisition of language and their drive to discover and define the seemingly infinite new things that get introduced to their senses. Our nacent sense of wonder is our earliest guide to the world. It’s strange that we relegate wonder to the realm of childhood.…