Rebecca Davis and Roger Asay
Sticks and Stones (n.d.)
Mixed Media
Gift of Jonathan and Fay Abrams
Artists Rebecca Davis and Roger Asay are known for their long-standing collaborative practice centered on natural materials and site-inspired installations. Working together since the early 1980s, the duo has explored how the elemental forms of the natural world—wood, stone, earth, and fiber—can be arranged in ways that speak to balance, structure, and the rhythms of ecological time.
Sticks and Stones is a quintessential expression of their philosophy: a meditation on material simplicity and spatial harmony. Using raw, gathered materials—often collected from specific landscapes in the American Southwest—the piece invites viewers to reconsider the overlooked beauty of natural detritus. The arrangement transforms the ordinary into something sacred, drawing attention to pattern, process, and the cycles of nature.
Though undated, the work belongs to a body of installations and sculptures that challenge the boundary between art and environment. Davis and Asay do not alter the materials they collect—they let the sticks, stones, and fibers speak for themselves, asserting the aesthetic intelligence inherent in nature.
Their work has been exhibited in museums, public spaces, and environmental art festivals across the United States, where it continues to foster conversations about sustainability, perception, and our relationship with the land.
