Red Dot Project

If you’re an artist who takes inspiration from nature, it’s hard not to be tuned in to, and perhaps worried about, the health of the planet.

“My observation of the natural world as a basis for making my art has led to my increasing concern for maintaining our planet,” says Nancy Richards-Davis, who makes abstract paintings using encaustic, a beeswax-based medium.

“I am very concerned with the problem of hive abandonment among bee populations,” she says. But the issue isn’t just that a dwindling bee population makes beeswax more expensive for her. It’s that thriving hives feed a healthy planet.

Richards-Davis is one of the 15 artists whose work has adorned the PNC SmartHome, a model home in University Circle that demonstrates sustainable building technologies. RED DOT Project and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History collaborated in finding Northeast Ohio artists whose methods, materials or subject matter echoed the theme of sensitivity to the environment.

Richards-Davis easily met the criteria.

“I spent two years working on a show in collaboration with artist/photographer Bradley Hart on a project titled ’1 Degree of Change. ‘ Part of my concept in that work was the metaphor of the fusing of encaustic (in beeswax painting, each layer of wax must be heated and fused to the previous layer) to the warming of the planet.”

Hart, who is also a SmartHome artist, created six black and white photographs while  Richards-Davis did six encaustic works. Each addressed issues around climate change. “Bleaching,” featured at the SmartHome, explores the rising temperature of the seawater and its effects on the coral reefs. (Like other featured art and decor, it will be at the Smart Art Sale, which takes place from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday.)

Being green is a local issue, too. In Richards-Davis’s studio, she uses rags rather than paper towels and weighs the benefits of using the more expensive but environmentally friendly soy wax to clean brushes. Her other option is paraffin, which is petroleum-based.

In the end, though, her work isn’t just about the right methods and materials. It’s about aesthetically beautiful abstraction and what it evokes.

“I think that in our superficial, fast-paced world, art asks us to slow down long enough to consider, ponder and reflect,” says the artist. “As for what it does for me, it allows me to play my one note in the symphony. ”

Artwork shown: Bleaching, Nancy Richards-Davis