 I'm Mackenzie Davis and I am originally from Iowa but I've been living in Lions, Colorado basically since I was 10 on. So I got to grow up there. I hate to talk about myself in academic terms but I feel like I've been in school my entire life. So I got my undergrad, my BFA from Colorado State University in Fort Collins and then I had a little bit of time just making work and then I got to go to Hawaii to get my MFA. So I actually completed that in May of last year. I was there for three whole years. I was there through COVID but that's where I basically got to know paper making and I also got to get three years of teaching experience while I was there. So that gave me the opportunity to come back here and my original you know drawing and painting teacher from Front Orange Community College gave me the opportunity to start teaching there. So I'm a painter, paper maker, teacher and that's how I would describe myself at this point in my life. Originally when I came back here from Hawaii I started teaching at Front Orange and I was also asked to come be on the board of directors here at the Firehouse and everyone is so wonderful everyone's so nice. It was a place for me to kind of come back to my home and like relearn you know what's going on here all the art happening here it just seems like the Firehouse is such a good hub for so many things going on our education, these opportunities for artists and I became so comfortable here that I was like this should be the place that I kind of experiment more and push myself more after grad school. So I also think it's a really important Longmont location it's a historical building and there's a lot of culture here and so I thought this space as beautiful as it is would be a wonderful place to do this residency. You know I think a big part of it is you know how humans kind of interpret their relationship to the landscape around them whether that be the urban landscape the natural landscape like all the overlapping stories that are told about any given location is what's really interesting to me so you know when I was in Hawaii there's all these different perspectives and stories that are told and that you have to kind of take all of them into account and that's what weaves the story of that place and so coming back here I'm it's still very interesting to me how people you know tell stories of the landscape whether that be like indigenous knowledge or like geological data personal stories that people have in the landscape just the day-to-day local culture as well all those layers I think is what creates the landscape and so I'm really inspired by kind of investigating those layers and trying to create my own layers of meaning for the space the location around me. To me art is a way to kind of understand the world around me and all the different ways to interpret it and the different perspectives going on so I absolutely love having different processes I can jump around to so I think the variety of things I have going on is my favorite part of what I'm doing in here right now. I really hope to accomplish like exploring all the different perspectives of Longmont as I can while I'm here painting them creating the textures the colors kind of the landscape reinterpreting the landscape and then creating an installation that shows like all the new things I've learned and new perspectives that have kind of poured into this process. I think paper itself is such a great material to use because it's it's a material that relates to communication and connecting people to each other and also it's a really just a funny story personally for me because right before the COVID shutdown everything has to kind of be related to the COVID shutdown these days but right before that I was taking a reuse and recycling class at the University of Hawaii and we got like very basic knowledge of paper making for like two weeks or something like that and then the shutdowns and but I was still in a class where they were like okay continue with that with that paper making process so I kind of had to figure out how to do it at home alone and that's what created like this interesting paper process for myself but then as soon as COVID was done it became a way to connect with people instead of doing it in isolation it was more about like okay what are all these interesting ways that we've used the material of paper and you know everybody got to collaborate and it felt like a really easy material to approach and also everyone has junk mail everyone has mail that they just get rid of all the time it's kind of this collective material that just like flows through you know the city and I think it's a perfect thing to recycle and to like recontextualize the meaning of and add soils and pigments I really think of it as like a landscape type of situation where you're combining like the urban environment of all the mail that we get all the paper and then you can put in soil that you go find from the landscape and it can be kind of sculptural it can be kind of painting it can it can be whatever you want so I see it as kind of this fluid material that I think is perfect for exploring all the ideas I'm talking about right now. I hope that people who are from here can like see familiar aspects of the landscape while they look at the final pieces but I also hope that it takes away some of the familiarity at the same time and kind of creates a mystery of long month that maybe people want to explore it in a different way the way that they haven't already kind of similar to what I'm doing because I will have these large kind of urban or natural landscape paintings up on the walls in the gallery and then they'll be partially covered with this handmade paper these layers of handmade paper this new kind of landscape so there will be aspects of you know long month's culture and its landscape they're hidden or revealed and so I think that kind of plays into the idea that there's many different ways to talk about this place and you know maybe you're just getting one perspective and there's so much out there that people have to talk about sometimes in your your own home you take it for granted and you don't ask those questions or try to dive deeper about the culture and so hopefully that is something that people think about when they're in the exhibition I also hope that they see their own fingerprints and hand prints in there because I want people to come to paper-making workshops and make the paper with me and actually put their hand prints in in the material and then once that's up on the wall you know it's a sense of connection and just like fun honestly I just want people to have fun as well. Behind me right now is where I'm starting as far as the painting itself I'm going to cover one of the entire walls in the gallery with with these paintings but I'm starting with the doors of the firehouse because for me it's all starting here at the firehouse right like I said it's a cultural it's a historical building it's it's the place that's been the most welcoming to me it's the place I'm getting to explore you know all of these ideas so many people who are members here come in and talk to me just members of the community get to come in here so I think it's a great representation of long like the heart of Longmont and then from there I'm gonna have landscapes that have been suggested to me by you know friends or members of the community you know like Macintosh Lake or different areas that are important to different people and I'm gonna have those landscapes sprawling out from the sides of the firehouse to kind of expand on that and all the different Longmont landscapes how many times can I say the word landscape it's gonna be like 500 it's gonna be pretty loose and there will just be you know aspects that are peeping through some of the cracks and holes in the the kind of layer of new paper landscape that I'm creating there I will also be creating pillars that are basically paper sculptures their paper pulp smushed onto these these pillars and they will kind of represent I don't know kind of where earth meets society kind of moments different kind of column-esque forms that I think are interesting throughout Longmont so I'm making a cottonwood tree right now but we'll also maybe look into like the sugar mill smokestack other trees other things that kind of bring together these landmarks of Longmont so there will be a little bit of an element of you know that 3d going on in the center of the gallery as well people can interact with so somewhere on the streets which is firehouse hosts a fun you know like little festival on the street right out front where there's vendors there's music people can come in and see what the artists are working on so I'll have like all this paper making that set up for people to work on and what's wonderful about those is people are always like I didn't know this was so easy and they just have so much fun and it's super approachable August 19th it's less crazy as than somewhere on the streets so you have more of a chance to kind of play around with all the materials it's fun because then you have to wait for it to dry and you don't know what it's gonna look like afterwards so a little bit of patience and a little bit of like you know natural forces happening that you don't get control it's a super fun time the exhibit opens September 8th and I'll be up for a month and there will be a VIP opening for members of the firehouse and then it opens to the rest of the community you can go to the firehouse website I also have Instagram it's at my frenzy MAFRI and ZIE those are mostly the places right now that have information and pictures and live updates the firehouse Instagram we try to post a lot of fun things process videos stuff like that yeah so I'm excited for everyone to kind of engage as much as possible during this I'd really love for the exhibition to be to have proof of the community throughout the whole thing so it kind of just reminds me of like everything being recycled you know stories and and all of the ideas that we share with each other and yeah so it's just it's it's a great recycling time that you can have with anything