She achieved her first public attention in New York in the 1990s with her "Lucky Paintings" and "Lucky Chairs" exhibiting at the OK Harris Gallery, and then at the Gracie Mansion Gallery. Following the Lucky Paintings were the "tattoo paintings", "product paintings", and the "furniture paintings".
Photography
Although primarily focusing on her paintings in the 1980s, Davies simultaneously began to photograph the East Village. In the mid-1990s she had a fire in her loft on Avenue A and lost almost all her negatives to that date. In 2000 Davies had her first solo photography exhibit at the Gracie Mansion Gallery in the East Village. The Alien Photos served as a visual bridge between her paintings and her photography. The final large-scale images consisted of dioramas that she constructed to house the 6-inch alien dolls in Barbie clothes in domestic situations.
Davies has been photographing New York City's Lower East Side since 1983. She received a New York City Council Citation on February 6, 2014 from Rosie Mendez for her ongoing documenting of the Lower East Side, and the neighborhood's socio-economic changes. Davies exhibited these photographs at the now-closed Bernarducci Meisel Gallery in New York City, in 2014 and 2015.
After betting with a restaurateur friend that McDonald's food did not spoil, rot, or go mouldy, Sally Davies purchased a Happy Meal from McDonald's and began photographing the food item daily, storing it on her kitchen counter. This commenced the "McDonald's Happy Meal Project". The project began on April 10, 2010 and went viral about three months later. The project demonstrated that the Happy Meal looked the same as it did when it was purchased months and years later. On August 19, 2018 the Happy Meal Project reached it 3051st day. It continues to be documented by Sally Davies.
Her "Lucky Chairs" have been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Sex and the City.
Davies' portraits include Debra Wingeron the cover of Winger's 2008 book "undiscovered", Elaine Kaufman in Everyone Comes to Elaine's, and Jim Cuddy's CD, "The Light That Guides You Home", and Jim Cuddy's CD, "Skyscraper Soul" 2011 Her photographs of the 9/11 attacks can be found in "A Democracy of Photos". In 2018, Davies art directed and photographed the cover image for Jim Cuddy's album Constellation.
