Holiday Travel21 December 2011
Friends,
I’m writing to you from an airplane hovering somewhere between LAX and Dallas/Fort Worth, disoriented and offensively malodorous, to let you know that I’ll be away from my base station for a while so there will be significant delays in filling print orders until February 2012. It’s admittedly ill timed considering the relative newness of my online entrepreneurial efforts but the Australian government begs that I leave the country for a significant amount of time in order to gain new entry as a student next year. Any orders placed from now until the end of January will be filled, signed and mailed when I return to Australia.
My sincerest apologies for any inconvenience, impatience or general dissatisfaction this may cause. Meanwhile, here’s a festive holiday drawing recycled from last year.
Love to you all, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
xx Taylor
Commerce!30 November 2011
I’m happy to announce, ladies and gents, that I’ve finally opened up my online store after months of fiercely committed lollygagging. It feels good! The first orders have been retrieved, signed, and prepared for shipping, and I could scarcely be more excited.
I do print cycles on a weekly basis and retrieve, package and ship them by hand so wait times will vary depending on which day of the week you order them. I’m always available via email if you find yourself with any specific inquiries, comments or requests.
Also, you can find a fair few informative, miscellaneous updates over on Facebook.
Board at NGV16 November 2011
There’s a great exhibition going on right now at NGV Studio in Melbourne, of which I am privileged to be a part. ‘Board’ explores the evolution of deck graphics and design with a display of work from emerging artists throughout Australia, shown alongside some insanely cool decks, hardware and ephemera from decades past. From the NGV Studio website:
Presenting 1970s & 80s skateboards and ephemera from Tony Hallam’s collection alongside decks created for the exhibition by 50 Australian artists, it explores the evolution of board graphics and design.
Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Alex Baker states: ‘Tony Hallam’s collection digs deep into the formative years of skate culture during which board graphics evolved from simple lettering to elaborate artwork. Once a professional skateboarder, Hallam has gone to painstaking lengths to track down some of the most important boards in history. On view at NGV Studio are gems such as Tony Hawk’s first signature model (1982) and an early Zephyr board (mid-1970s) personally owned by skateboard legend Stacy Peralta. The selection of skateboards and ephemera in Board allows an insight into skateboarding’s surfing roots through to its cross-fertilisation with punk rock and other renegade sub-cultures. Hallam’s is considered one of the most comprehensive skateboard collections in the world, and the NGV is honoured to present it to both avid skate fans and non-initiates alike. This is an important lesson in another form of art history – one that speaks a language that originated on the streets and is ongoing today.’
Following a recent philosophical dive into the combined states of physical and mental vulnerability I wound up with an image of a dissected boy, his bone, muscle and sinew cracked and exposed. I took advantage of the color and striated surface texture of the deck I was given (it was a red one) and built up the image using ever so thin applications of black, white and transparent yellow acrylic, interspersed with layers of semi-gloss gel to enhance the depth and color and give it an attractive sheen.
See the whole damn thing at NGV Studio in Federation Square from now til 5 February 2012.
Cowboys & Indians Remix16 October 2011
I had done this “Cowboys and Indians” set for my Every Nice Thing exhibition back in May, but they haven’t seen the light of day for a while because I had felt like the end product lacked a certain amount of enthusiasm. It always left me with a sense of unease – like I’d been paying unnecessary neglect to a couple of benignly flawed relatives – and I’d always hoped I’d be able to pull them from the ashes one day or another. Over the years I’ve acquired a backlog of unfinished ideas, rejected sketches, and unsatisfactory finished work, and I’ve found that despite the urge to trash everything I don’t like, it’s always good to hang on to the old stuff so that it can be recycled later. Here’s a perfectly good example.
Over the weekend I wanted to do some experiments with displacement mapping in Photoshop and needed some source material. After a couple of hours, a bit of tinkering with layer masks and color adjustments, the story of these two estranged playmates can finally be told.
>Cowboys & Indians No. 1. 9 x 14.5 inches @300 dpi, 2011
>Cowboys & Indians No. 2. 9 x 14.5 inches @300 dpi, 2011
ONE x ONE x ONE13 October 2011
>Left: “Requiem.” Right: detail. Acrylic and mixed media on wood, 2011
Gird your loins, ladies and gentlemen, for it’s time to announce the next in a long line of exciting events: ONE x ONE x ONE. Presented by Three Sixty Project, ONE x ONE x ONE is a philanthropic traveling art exhibition developed with the aim of benefitting underdeveloped youth communities the world over. To that end, 55 unique skateboard decks will tour the east coast of Australia, making stops in Sydney, Melbourne and the Gold Coast. Proceeds from the sale of these decks will help fund various area-specific youth community projects.
Falling under the category of ‘local artists,’ the deck I made will be part of the Melbourne specific exhibition held at No Vacancy Gallery on Tuesday, 18 October.
The artwork for this deck was created as a companion piece to “Reckoning,” which had been on display at Thousand Pound Bend from 21-26 September as part of Just Another Group Show. The pieces represent the different processes by which we handle our sources of angst and discomfort; there is resistance, and there is acceptance. This piece is about letting go the slippery beast of suffering and allowing oneself to accept their reality.