We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Taylor Thomas a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Taylor, appreciate you joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey for every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I’ve had the opportunity to do so much learning during my first year of graduate school at CalArts. Having the time and space to be a student again and embrace curiosity whenever it strikes has been invaluable as I develop my artistic practice. There’s so much trial and error in learning how to best translate the ideas in my head into pieces of art. It requires a lot of patience – something I’m still learning to give to myself! However, each subsequent work I create stands as a marker for my creative development. I don’t think there’s any way to speed up the learning process – it’s a gradual building up of skills and experience. I want to make a career out of being an artist, and I hope that I’m still learning new things about myself and my practice thirty years from now. That’s what makes it exciting!

Taylor, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a Chicago native who is based out of Los Angeles. I graduated Magna cum Laude with Distinction from Amherst College in 2017 where I double majored in Sociology and Film & Media Studies. After undergrad, I worked my way up the ranks in the film industry to become a Development Executive at Netflix and The Walt Disney Company. I loved telling stories about traditionally underrepresented people as well as working with emerging and diverse talent behind the camera. However, recent trends in the film industry left me without as many opportunities to create and amplify those voices. I found myself creating art after work and on the weekends to mediate against the corporate creative that I felt was producing a representational void and making me feel invisible. After a few months, I decided to fully commit myself to my art practice to regain ownership over my ability to generate the reflections of myself and people of color that make me feel whole.

My collage-based art practice is consistently informed by my investigation of family to better understand myself. Like most Black people, the logistics of tracing my family history is challenging. That gives the photos and stories we do have immeasurable power. Dissecting my subjects from the confines of their picture frames frees them from the boundaries of time. I weave these images of my family with found materials: commercial street posters, blankets, etc. to create a composition that calls attention to the similarities and differences in the ways Blackness is depicted in culture. I also employ mirrors in my work to reach out and capture the reflected image of viewers to bring them into a closeness with my subjects. It’s in this act of seeing oneself in an “other” that I hope to inspire connection and celebrate the memory of those in my family that came before me.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I could understand some people questioning why I would leave the film industry right after I’d achieved a career milestone that I spent years working towards. When you start off in the industry, one of your first jobs is being an assistant. You then work to pay your dues and get a foothold in the business with the hopes of becoming an Executive. I struggled coming to terms with the idea that I was “giving up” a career right when it was supposed to get good, and I worried that I’d wasted so much time forging a path that I no longer wanted to go down. However, I had to realize that dreams change and priorities shift. There’s also no fault in thinking that something is for you, getting there, and realizing that it’s not what you expected it to be. I’m so happy that I made my career pivot, and I know that the time I spent in film and the skills I developed there are important influences to my perspective that show up in my art practice.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I’m most rewarded when I feel as though I’ve successfully captured an idea or aspect of the Black experience in my work. I love storytelling, and any chance I get to create a piece that sheds light and builds connection is wildly fulfilling.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://createdbytaylor.squarespace.com/
• Instagram: @created.by.taylor