Fingers run on and vibrate steel strings, creating a low, metallic, funky hum. Pressing down on the handle, a metal saw is powered on, followed by a constant deafening whirr and occasional light sparks. Davis Dunaway (12) creates art through two primary mediums: composing on his bass and designing functional 3D art.

“I work with furniture, but there’s just tons of pieces that would not be found in museums but that I would consider art,” Davis said.

Drawing from other fields, Davis’s inspiration for his art is multifaceted and stems from academics studies like science.

“Being able to look at a system in biology and break it down into its parts and see, ‘Oh, this can be used for a design that I’m using,’ or ‘This works some way in music or any other field’ is something that I really value being able to do,” Davis said.

In addition to drawing from his studies at school, Davis looks to nature for patterns and designs and how it incorporates both aesthetics and function.

“When you look at nature, everyone tends to think about the more organic side, but there’s a lot of things that follow symmetry; there’s just tiny little differences,” Davis said. “The fact that it uses irregular shapes that we would never use in buildings such as hexagons, that is fascinating, since, who would think about using a hexagon shaped building, when nature does it all the time?”

For Davis, the creative processes with design and music both involve flexibility in order to progress.

“If you’re working on designing a piece or playing a solo, you have to be ready to react to things as they come up,” Davis said. “ You just have to know that not everything is going to work exactly as you planned and that is going to be okay, that as long as you are able to work with it, it will come out fine in the end.”

Maile, who was one of Davis’s bandmates in Hoscars, describes his ability to improvise during solos.

“When he solos he goes hard. I have been with him when he has broken strings while soloing; it’s insane. He then continues to play the rest of the song with three strings.”

Davis identifies the design aspect of himself to be one of his favorite activities and what sets him apart from others.

“I definitely think that the extracurricular, mainly design portion, of myself is really who I like to show because that is what I’m passionate about,” he said. “There’s a lot of people at Harker who excel at academics. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there are a lot of people like that, so I like having that unique experience in design.