David L. Jones
Unnatural/Vicious Cyle, 2025
birch plywood, model components, paint
Artist Statement
My studio practice for the last twenty-two years has been focused on the human presence in the landscape (specifically the Western US), land use, energy extraction, and the impacts of the Anthropocene. My role as the artist is to point out what is readily observable based on the topics listed above. Much of my visual material comes from road trips, following economic data, and, more often than not, simply being outdoors and observing the environment I find myself in.
I live in Laramie, Wyoming and am quite accustomed to seeing wildfire events firsthand. While wildfires are part of a natural cycle/process (ex. lodgepole pine trees cannot reproduce without fire events), what has struck me as different about what we are witnessing now is the frequency, intensity, and the fact that many of these events are ignited by human error. The wildfire disaster that took place in Paradise, CA, the 2018 Camp Fire, was started by a downed electric transmission line. My piece titled, Unnatural Vicious Cycle, is a direct reference to that event. I am struck by the irony that we have to have electricity/energy to function as a society and that the energy production we all rely on has made for a much more volatile and unpredictable climate. Due to this, we are seeing more volatile destructive wildfire events, and in some cases-the 2018 Camp Fire specifically-the very means of infrastructure for our energy supply are the direct culprits.
Artist bio
David Jones, originally from Augusta, Georgia, received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Georgia in 2000. For the following year, he resided in Birmingham, Alabama, where he worked in the Sloss Metal Arts Artist-in-Residency program casting iron before going on to pursue his master’s degree. In 2004, he received his MFA in sculpture from the University of Tennessee. After graduate school, he moved to the Rocky Mountain West in Laramie, Wyoming. He is currently a Senior Art Instructional Technician in the University of Wyoming Department of Visual Arts and Art History.
He has had an art career that has spanned 28 years now, and he has exhibited actively throughout the United States for most of his career. Some of the more current highlights are acting Vice President/founding board member of the Western Cast Iron Art Alliance https://wciaa.org, current/founding member of the Land Report Collective https://landreportcollective.com/home.html, a participant and planner for the Sesquicentennial Colorado River Exploring Expedition (SCREE) https://www.powell150.org, was curated into The Space(s) in Between https://www.thespacesbtw.org, and helped to organize and participate in the Extraction-Art on The Edge of The Abyss exhibition/project https://www.extractionart.org. He also has worked with his wife, Ashley Hope Carlisle Professor of Sculpture, on various public art projects with their LLC, Winddriven Studios.
