WINDSOR โ When Davey Davis was growing up on his familyโs chicken farm at the base of Mount Ascutney, he would often venture into the nearby forest to fish, hunt and explore.
โI always felt something so big and mysterious in the woods,โ Davis, now 78, said in a recent interview at Boston Dreams, a coffee shop in Windsor where he lives today.
A longtime musician, Davis has played in numerous Upper Valley bands over the years, but his creative impulse also extends to film photography. It was through his experiments with manipulating the photos he took, a process even Davis finds hard to explain, that the mysterious presence in the woods finally revealed itself to him. The revelation occurred in 2016, after an expedition in Chateauguay, a roughly 60,000-acre Vermont forest that stretches across parts of Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington and Stockbridge.
His friend, the late Jay Stevens, who authored the historical book โStorming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream,โ was the first to point out the strange mask-like faces that appeared in Davisโ distorted photos of tree bark, mottled rock faces and babbling streams.
It seemed that the primordial force Davis had sensed in the forest for all those years had finally made itself known, and it was calling for action.
โItโs saying: โOK, people, itโs time to take care of Mother Nature, because otherwise youโre going to die as a species,โ Davis said.
Davis has taken thousands of photos of the Upper Valleyโs landscapes since that excursion to Chateauguay (pronounced shat-uh-gey) as part of an environmental project he calls “Canvas the Planet.” Some 50 of those images will be on view at the Grange Hall in Brownsville on Friday, and a thousand or so more will be displayed digitally.
Searching for the faces in Davisโ bright, kaleidoscopic images is a bit like deciphering the ink blots in a Rorschach test. At first glance, it can be difficult to make out the figures in the photos’ explosion of crystalline patterns. Some of those photos are so distorted they bear almost no relation to their point of origin. But upon closer inspection, alien visages and the silhouettes of different animals begin to surface, often on the photoโs edge.ย
The faces made me think of Carl Jungโs archetypes of the collective unconscious, the figures and images that underpin his theory of a universal symbolic alphabet, but unlike Jungโs archetypes, the characters in Davisโ photographs rarely show up a second time.
In one photo, taken on Mount Ascutney, the silhouette of a stooped figure, a shaman, emerges from a tree trunk that shimmers purple and gold.
In another, the face of a dog cloaked in layers of amber appears on the left-hand side while the beady eyes of an eagle, or perhaps a viper, glisten from the opposite edge.
Some of these figures are friendly, Davis said, while others are ominous or stern, but he still never feels afraid venturing into the woods alone. For him, the natural world is a comforting place.
โIโm a tree hugger,โ he said.
Over the years, his connection to nature has seeped into all corners of his creative life. In the early โ90s he developed a clothing line inspired by the colors and patterns of trout scales. At our interview, he wore one of his blue and orange TroutWear caps speckled with red spots and one of the companyโs branded T-shirts.
Davisโ forays into the natural world also inspired him to record a grassroots folk album, โBones of the Heart,โ with a number of collaborators, including the Central Vermont producer and singer-songwriter Kristina Stykos. He plans to perform some of his songs at Fridayโs exhibit.
โHere I am once again, far away from people, alone, blissfully aloneโฆAll by myself I tend to melt into my zone, where I am blissfully alone,โ go the lyrics to one of the tracks on the album.
โI believe everybody needs to live in solitude,โ Davis said in our interview. โA touch of solitude.โ
โThe Reflective Art of Natureโ is on view at the Grange Hall at 1023 Route 44 in Brownsville, Vt., from 3 to 9 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 22. For more information, visit the West Windsor Historical Societyโs Facebook page.
An American movie
On Thursday, Aug. 21, The Upper Valley Food Co-op Documentary Club and Junction Arts & Media, or JAM, will host a screening of โAmerican Movie,โ a โ90s cult-classic about Mark Borchardt, an aspiring filmmaker and newspaper delivery man from Wisconsin whoโs determined to finish making his horror film despite the obstacles that fall across his path.
The free screening is scheduled for 7 p.m. at JAM in White River Junction. A group discussion is set to follow the film. For more information, visit uvjam.org.
Frolic at the fest
The annual Fledge Fest, a celebration of food, farming, music and the good life, takes place on Friday and Saturday at Fledgling Farmstead in Tunbridge.
The sheer number of events and details packed into the hours from 4 p.m. Friday until the wee hours of Saturday night is too much to describe in full. The festival ranges from an opening free potluck (admission on Friday is free, too) and film screening, to a full day on Saturday (tickets required) of music, visual art, demonstrations, food trucks, forest walks, a plant walk, a qigong class, children’s activities and more.
The 11 musical offerings, spread across two stages, sound like fun, including Bethel singer-songwriter Spencer Lewis, and a range of indie rock, pop and folk acts, as well as the funk band What?.
For the full skinny, including tickets, which are by a pay-what-you-can arrangement, go to fledglingfarmstead.com.
โ Alex Hanson
Atypical tunes
The Uncommon Jam Musical Festival, now in its 11th year, is slated for 1 to 6 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 24 on the Newbury Common. Musical acts include the Americana and country cover band Faerie Godbrothers, of central Vermont, six-piece band the Party Crashers, of the Upper Valley, and the Dave Keller band, of Montpelier.
Korean, Italian, barbecue and ice cream vendors will be on-site for those seeking lunch or dinner, and a craft beer garden will be set up for concert goers seeking a cool libation.
Tickets ($10; free for children under 12) can be purchased at the festival gate. For more information, visit courtstreetarts.org or call 802-866-3320.
Peace and chaos
South Burlington-based Korean-American artist Misoo Bangโs exhibit โ์ ๋ฏธ๊ฐ์ค ่ฝ่ฟท้ๆ: Buddhist Teaching of Being Freed of Anguish and Reaching Nirvanaโ opens this Friday at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon. The show explores different attempts at achieving a sense of peace and freedom in a chaotic and violent society depicted through a range of figures: portraits of Asian-American women and paintings of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, a Buddhist individual who has delayed their access to enlightenment in order to help others on their own journey.
An opening reception for the exhibit is scheduled for 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday. For more information about the show, which is on view through Sept. 27, visit avagallery.org or call 603-448-3317.