Ilsa Bauer

Ilsa Bauer is a recent graduate of University of California, Davis with a BA in fine art and art history. She completed a residency at the Royal Drawing School in London this past December. She is interested in exploring places and objects both natural and man-made and their changes through time. She enjoys mudlarking, taking photographs in alleyways, mapping her walks with sketches and finding the wonderful in the mundane.

Foreign Body I (Invasive Aquatics) is part of a body of work that explores the “foreign bodies” that occupy the environment around the American and Sacramento Rivers. My observations and experiences in that space directly inform how I illustrate the hazy boundary between native vs invasive, residents vs foreigners

At a glance, this alien flora is beautiful. These plants seem at home, abundant residents of the rivers like the boaters or the sturgeon. Upon closer inspection and research, these plants were literal transplants from all over the world by way of human meddling. Heaps of water hyacinths snake down the rivers looking like swamp monsters. Coontails lurk below the surface tinging the water chartreuse. These plants are not benign. They are looming in our periphery, taking shape to drown out their native neighbors.

I have been watching foreign entities become naturalized at the expense of those who were here first. I have only witnessed it because I started to look closely. Drawing the details of these individual species was a slow and meditative process. In turn, I hope this work slows down the viewers’ process of looking and brings greater awareness of their environment.