Artist Statement

Abstract

Artist Statement Michael K. Taylor (bio) The work exists to provide the audience and viewer with opportunities to consider possibilities of truth outside their individual experiences. Paint, wood, and paper stand on equal footing with poetry, performance, and social interaction as mediums to create a catalyst for moments of altered reality. Through remixing experiences gathered from personal research, community dialogues, and environmental investigations I build speculative fiction narratives as the reality in which the work exists when viewed by the audience. Earlier works communicate personal patterns of movement, emotional fluctuations and thought. The Meteor series relates to the creation of belief systems and cultures influenced by the cosmological mythologies of comets and shooting stars. I traveled to cut wood from trees across the United States. This essential process initiated the artwork and ideas influencing the viewers’ physical movements required to fully observe the piece—their movements around a space. This body of symbols, language, and maps exist as found objects within the altered reality of their narrative. [End Page 961] Click for larger view View full resolution Michael K. Taylor, Imagination Corona 003 (2007) Oil, acrylic, and engraved wood (24” x 24” x ½”) [End Page 962] Click for larger view View full resolution Michael K. Taylor, Quatro Meteor Shard (2014) Oil, acrylic, solid wood core (circumference 10”) Click for larger view View full resolution Michael K. Taylor, Intrinsic Study A.B. (2014) Engraved and stained oak (28” x 28” x 1 ½”) Click for larger view View full resolution Michael K. Taylor, Onz Meteor Shard (2014) Oil, acrylic, solid wood core (circumference 10”) [End Page 963] Click for larger view View full resolution Michael K. Taylor, Huemonic 3rd 3001 (2008) Oil, acrylic, and engraved wood (24” x 24” x 2 ½”) [End Page 964] Michael K. Taylor MICHAEL K. TAYLOR—sculptor, painter, and performance artist—was born in 1979 in Metairie, Louisiana. In 1997 he graduated from Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and in 2003 he received the BFA degree from the University of Houston. He has completed a number of residencies and workshops—such as those at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Amherst (2014); Goldsmiths, University of London (2013); Ox-Bow School of Art, Saugatuck, MI (2013); Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL (2013); and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME (2012). His solo and group exhibitions include galleries, museums, and other venues for the arts in Texas, Florida, New York, Philadelphia, Skowhegan, and Nairobi, Kenya. He has had mounted curatorial projects in Houston for various institutions, including the Community Artists’ Collective and Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Copyright © 2014 The Johns Hopkins University Press