Where Writers Write: Carlton Davis

Welcome to another installment of TNBBC's Where Writers Write!

 

Where Writers Write is a series that features authors as they showcase their writing spaces using short form essay, photos, and/or video. As a lover of books and all of the hard work that goes into creating them, I thought it would be fun to see where the authors roll up their sleeves and make the magic happen. 

This is Carlton Davis. Carlton is an author, artist, and architect. In 2024, Davis published a book that recounts 50 years of self-portraits. He wrote for LA Architect and was their design critic. In 2009, He published a book entitled Bipolar Bare, which documents his 40-year struggle with Bipolar Disorder.  In September 2012, he published The Art Dockuments, the story of the Art Dock, the drive-by art gallery. He had writing residencies at Montalvo in Saratoga, CA  and at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula, CA. Mr. Davis considers himself a draftsman, and sculptor as well as a writer. In his writing he often incorporates his drawings. In his architectural practice he designed the North Hollywood Subway Station for Los Angeles’ MTA Red Line, and the headquarters of the Los Angeles Mission for the homeless. He is known for incorporating artist’s work in his projects.  Mr. Davis graduated from Yale University, the Yale University School of Architecture, and the University of London, UK.Carlton Davis was a lecturer in Architecture at UCLA, Woodbury University, and an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming. He taught drawing at Otis Art Institute. He can be found: www.carltondavisart.com    |    www.bipolarbarebook.com

Where Carlton Davis Writes

The studio in Pasadena, California in the trees

My studio is in the trees of Brookside Park overlooking the Rose Bowl in the distance. Today the Juneenth of 2025 a football match part of the world cup is taking place in the bowl.  I haven’t. the foggiest notion what nations are playing. Through the smoky air I can barely see the huge animated sign flashing enormous stars my way. There is no sound now because the game will be in the evening when I can hear the cheering or other times yelling of youngsters when there is a meet in the aquatic center below my house. If I’m still writing or drawing as I often am, the noise is a minor background to the quiet surrounding the studio.

View of the Park through the studio windows

The studio is isolated on the lowest floor of a basically three-story home perched on the side of a hill. A park is the view out the windows that cover the studio’s two sides. What I see close by are birds soaring, hummingbirds flitting tree to tree, leaves falling silently, branches bending in the breezes, two palms swaying in the wind and poking through the canopy of green. Just outside the windows, the general silence is only broken once weekly by the sputter of the gardener’s leaf blower and muffled shouts from people playing in the park below.  I am alone in an urban forest.  It allows me the calmness to contemplate and create in an environment of peace for my mind races with many thoughts and ideas. The studio is a container where I am surrounded low mountains spotted with houses that swell above distant parking lots and the football stadium. I see the studio as a vessel with many ports to distract a curious mind. Other times think of studio as a half full glass jar floating in a sea of green filled with the history of my interests: nature, parks, transportation, entertainment, my writing, and my art.

Photo of the frog shingle

Inside my studio is a mess. The small space is full of books. The greatest number of them are art books that I constantly reference for my art. I am an artist as well as a writer. There are also many books on architecture. I call myself and artist, architect, and author. There is my collection of frog models., I like frogs not only for their ribbit sound, but because they come in all kinds of weird shapes, sizes, and colors. My favorite frog to date is a Mexican wooden frog painted in green dots with white spots, a flower painted on its rump, enormously long front legs, and raised black eyes. The collection sits on a shingle mounted to a window sill with two metal clamps. Frogs are absurd and for a person who finds life absurd, a talisman.

With special meaning for me is my group of stuffed polar bears. If I were an animal, I would choose to be a polar bear. They are beautiful, savage, and they swim. I love to swim and every year on my birthday I would go to the ocean and roll in the waves like I imagine a polar bear would. Now that I am in my 80^th year I can’t do what I used to be able to do. I am unsteady on my legs and the waves make it difficult for me to get out of the surf. But I can still go to the beach and see other youngster play in the waves like the great white carnivore. In midst of my collection of stuffed polar bears I have a frog just to make the absurd a little bit more absurd. Perhaps I will do a drawing of a frog in the midst of polar bear pack one day,

Photo of my stuffed polar bears

          I am surrounded in my studio with places to work, design, and make art. The computer desk is the spot where I can gaze into the park when I need a break. Flanking it is a work table where I have a parallel bar to draw designs, a scanner covered with art books, a sketch book and a journal for writing. The rest of the desk is covered with a vertical file, the typical desk stuff, a tape dispenser, a three-hole punch, a pencil sharpener, and eleven cans full of soft drawing pencils, hard pencils for writing, blue, red, and black ink pens, color pencils, and markers of numerous shades. The rest of my studio has a couch never used, walls pined up with and reminders and of the things I shouldn’t forget but often do, and photographs of people important to me. One is me with my mother when I was five.

          Last of all and very important to me aside from computer table is my zone for making art. It is a small area consisting of my easel and small rolling cart. Presently the easel is without a drawing mounted on my drawing board.  I recently finished a drawing about the war in Gaza and moved the drawing to my drawing file, which is in the storage zone just beyond the work area. I doing a drawing on top if the rolling cart of the Gamble house, which is a famous residence around the corner from our residence. Since the drawing is small, therefore I have been using the cart to store the copies of my last book, “An Atist’s Life.”  All the areas of my Pasadena studio have for me, either as work zones or display areas, significance.

          The drawing Table

 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An Artist’s Life tells of artist Carlton Davis’s relentless search for resolution to his soul’s desire.  Despite degrees in architecture, his métier is making art, relating to the art stars while berating himself for lacking their talent and discipline.  Surviving terrifying mood swings, this keen observer documents all with drawings and words.  Life’s travails bedevil Carlton, who attempts suicide, fails at marriage, becomes addicted to crack cocaine, and discovers a female self he calls Carlotta “because she’s a whole lotta Carl.”  He struggles with meditation and ends up at a mental hospital, where a gifted psychiatrist diagnoses, medicates, and helps him initiate sobriety and recovery.  Self-portraits spanning 50 years grace An Artist’s Life.  At first there appear to be a dozen sitters rather than one, showing the essence of Carl’s harrowing unrest.  An Artist’s Life pleases eye and ear.  Collaboration with co-author Peter Lownds delivers a moving story combining art, reminiscence, and the pleasure of success.