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"What I do," says artist, teacher and entrepreneur Eranah Davies, "is fun. It's fun to make and it's fun to see."
The studio's tiny space, which opened last month, is filled with collages that instantly catch the eye.
"I like to create playful visual relationships," Davies says.
The collages, some framed, some not, dot the austere white walls, bringing the space alive with her creative energy.
Davies is a tall, slender young woman with lush brown hair she whisks over her shoulder from time to time, and big, expressive brown eyes. She is welcoming, with a teacher's patience for questions. Teaching is, in fact, what she does as well.
She has found an ideal environment for her creativity on St. Thomas.
"I'm from Cleveland," she says. "It's cold, snowy about five months of the year, little sun. Here, I'm outside lots of the time, finding things, and it's warm."
Those "things" run the gamut. It seems there's nothing so ordinary it can't be transformed into art, into an object from Davies' fertile imagination.
"I'm a believer in recycling, re-use," she says. She picks up a small piece of something covered with many colors and textures, cloth, wood and cardboard. She turns it over. "See,” she says, "it's a piece of fiberglass."
Pick up a $1 bookmark covered with a tiny drawing, a piece of denim, a peace sign. Turn it over. It's a piece of cardboard from a Sylvania 60 watt light bulb cover.
Davies moved here two years ago with her husband, Marlon Davies, who is from St. Thomas.
Though a computer programmer by profession, Davies is following his own artistic streak.
"He used to use photography to assist him in his job," Davies says, "but in the last two years, he has taken up photography as itself."
He is, in fact, having a show next month at sevenminusseven Alternative Art Alliance Seven, where Davies found her start on the island.
"I was working downtown when I heard about the alliance," she says. "I was itching to get back in to art."
She worked with alliance principal Clay Jones, teaching digital photography in the art outreach program at Sibilly Elementary School, at the same time creating and displaying her own artwork.
Davies says since she was in the second grade and tackled drawing a staircase, "realistically," she has known where she was headed.
"In high school," she says, "I studied art in an Cleveland after-school vocational program, and I got a full scholarship to the School of Visual Arts in New York City."
After one year in New York, Davies returned to Cleveland where she graduated with a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art, with a major in painting.
However, she says, "I was a poor student." By which she means she discovered she wasn't really drawn to huge oils on canvas.
"My response was not toward the intellectual, like Picasso's Guernica. I wanted art that had a more emotional appeal. I was driven by my own creativity. Rather than follow a slow intellectual process, I'd find myself doing quick little shelters on the fringes, little whispers."
Those "whispers" have found their own voice today, speaking from every corner of the small studio.
"I focus on the small things, quirky moments that give life its richness,” she says. “I use diverse materials, found objects, and paint to create playful visual relationships."
She is firm in her convictions.
"I believe in holistic healing; I believe art is healing," she says. "The arts offer an alternative to gangs, drugs, depression, for everyone, especially youngsters."
Davies is equally firm in her respect for the planet.
"I re-purpose things, recycle," she says, reaching for a pile of denim that turns out to be jeans skirts, pairs of jeans with colorful cotton prints sewn in to make a skirt, which she hangs on a nearby clothesline.
"I think I'm using recyclable material, found objects, as a metaphor that ‘change is possible.' Taking something old and creating a beautiful piece of art. I'm drawn to a loose aesthetic," she says. "Children' artwork, abstract expressionism, graffiti, primitive and outsider art."
After teaching a childrens' art program at Pistarkle Theater geared toward costume design, theater arts, Davis has begun classes of her own, not restricted to theater. After moving into her present quarters she taught children' winter workshops in everything from collage to a "yummy" food sculpture class.
Starting Monday, Davies begins a six-week session of after-school youth classes in mixed media, classical art instruction and an inquiry into "the purpose of art." The classes, from 3:15 to 5:45 p.m., are for children from six to 16 years. Further information can be obtained by calling 473-2882.