Carolina Alumni Review: Sorcerer’s Stones, March/April 2015
California-based sculptor Woods Davy has gained international recognition for artistry in balancing found natural elements. Davy’s prolific sculpture practice is rivaled only by his notable collection of Central African masks, both of which feed his interest in collecting and his adoration of architecture and expression.[/toggle][/accordian][accordian divider_line=”” class=”” id=””][toggle title=”Video” open=”no”][youtube id=”https://www.youtube.com/p_tQRdRikKo” width=”600″ height=”350″ autoplay=”no” api_params=”” class=””]

In ancient times a Davy sculpture might have been an object of worship, fear or ritual, and as was customary would have been anointed with oil or milk or smeared with blood of sacrifices.

– Ron Colby, A Man with Stones, documentary film

In a studio full of stones, sculptor Woods Davy trains nature to defy what’s natural. He named the series “Cantamar” after the Mexican beach where he gathers the stones used to construct the sculptures.

– KellyAalmond, The Scholar

The Woods Davy exhibition at Galerie Marie Laure de L’ecotais in Paris – the first of this artist in Europe – may cause the most cartesian (logical) of us to stop in their tracks. His creations – outcroppings of stones – vacillate between balance and tension, defying mathematic laws, and creating a surprising rapport between opposing forces. The stones appear to float in the air, renouncing their own identity as if their weight no longer existed. They seem to be held in a precarious equilibrium, evoking a feeling of total serenity. 

– Marie C. Aubert, La Gazette

For the past twenty-five years, Davy has worked with natural elements, usually incorporating various types of stone in fluid balancing acts that reflect the artist’s western Zen sensibility. The current body of work, entitled “Cantamar,” is created from stones collected on a beach in Mexico of the same name. The smooth, rounded, ovoid stones the artist collects are naturally polished and shaped by years of rolling and tumbling from wave to shore. Davy then assembles these stones in graceful, wave-like arcs that seem to float in space.

 – The American Sculptor

Woods Davy might be thought of as among the first “green” post-modern artists. In fact, he comes from a long tradition of post ‘60s artists like John Cage, who either directly or just by their practical sensibility, engage eastern or Zen notions of oneness with nature, organic systems of change as engines of art composition, non-disruptive respect for natural materials in unaltered states, and the fashioning of objects that are not your typical museum pedestal works.

– Artscene

Despite the enduring influence of modernism’s emphasis on material integrity –  the paint-for-paint’s sake philosophy that’s held sway for half a century – there is still something thrilling about a work that appears to defy its own natural properties. Such is the case with Woods Davy’s new stone sculpture, which flout the most basic law governing three-dimensional work:  gravity. In each case, the stones are joined end to end with invisible stainless steel pins and appear to be magically floating. The trick might come off as mere novelty, but for the quality of meditative reverence that underpins it. The stones retain their organic form despite their unnatural arrangement, and one is compelled to appreciate – as Davy clearly does – the simple beauty of their shape and texture.  In this sense, the works function like a Zen rock garden and will no doubt be better off in an environment more conducive than an art gallery to the practice of contemplation.

Holly Myers, The Los Angeles Times

 Heaven’s Gate is particularly Brancusian in its conversion of hard metal into supremely simple erotic poetry – but its eroticism, with the implication of female sexuality as a spiritual power of divine grandeur, is at the same time another profound identification with the tribal African vision of reality.

Jjonathan Saville, San Diego Reader

Davy has become a well-known figure on the urban landscape in recent years, both for his widely visible public commissions, such as a major piece on Wilshire Blvd., as well as many private collections. It was always easy to recognize Davy’s work for its precarious balance of rocks perched on heavy beams. Mixing an Asian sense of spareness with a sensitivity to the tension between natural and urban structures, Davy’s work had found its niche. So, like any good artist, he tried something new. New is only half of it.  Davy’s work is both a radical departure and a highly successful one. The internal tensions and the concern for balance remain, although the forms are no longer cantilevered beams; they are folded steel tubes rising triumphantly from the floor like an outcropping of silvery reeds. Reminiscent of Giaciometti’s attenuated figures as well as the bondage of Michaelangelo’s slaves, these very contemporary abstractions communicate an existential tension between transcendence and restraint, freedom and limitation.

Dinah Berland, Long Beach Press Telegram