Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Bethany Davis

Treatment Area: Moments Inside a CutBlock

A Cut Block is a mapped area of land after a logging company has come through and harvested timber. The area is filled with wasted trees, left over by the companies who harvested them. They overlap each other, like discarded bodies left in the open to rot. The first time I walked into a cut block I was surprised to feel how quiet the land was; a vast stillness among the remnants of the shattered life of the forest.Reforestation is built on a capitalistic structure. It is an extractive industry and does not adequately replace or honour the materials it removes from the environment. It assigns economic value to a resource that is beyond worth. Tree planters employed by this industry are quick and careless when replanting, like the machines which removed the forest. With these drawings, I respond to an industry replete with inconsiderate choices to the earth - my main focus when making this work is to create with softness, an expression of care and also rebellion.This body of work is about my interactions with a Cut Block - finding beauty within the decay and acknowledging the land's resilience. Through drawing, bookbinding, map collecting, curious annotations and 3D prints, the series represents both grief and reverence for the woodlands of rural Alberta.