We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Caleb Taylor. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Caleb below.
Alright, Caleb thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?
I am thrilled to be an artist, to always be in pursuit of new ideas, and to be seeking an understanding of how the work I’m making relates to my observations, my community, and the canon of art and design. The question of happiness or satisfaction for an artist can be a moving target influenced by the ebbs and flows of exhibition preparation, the challenges and excitement of building new work, and seeking new opportunities.
My profession is and has been an assemblage of jobs, projects, and pursuits – all with the goal of pushing my studio practice forward in compelling and unforeseen ways. Because I am a full-time professor of first-year art and design, in a way I have a ‘regular job’ that influences how I think about creativity, sustainability and inspiration. In the previous twelve years, I have worked as an art handler, museum preparator, potter, founding member of an artist-run gallery, professor of art and design, Department Chair and furniture designer, all in support of my creative development. I find the irregularity of these pursuits to be the most compelling way to structure my life – to participate in the many disciplines I’m influenced by.
My art handler positions early in my career created unbelievable experiences, and taught me that a life without focus on my own studio practice wasn’t an option for me personally. I have packed, crated, trucked and installed incredible artifacts including Titan II rocket engines from the Apollo missions, Chris Ofili’s bejeweled elephant dung balls, and Monet ‘Waterlily’ paintings. This position created opportunity to work with curators, gallerists and artists I aspired to know, yet I realized in my contractor role, I would not be seen or considered for my own artwork, rather for how well I completed jobs toward the advancement of others. I recall being asked by a video artist to install their work because they didn’t know how to properly hang a television and they didn’t want the collector to know – I was solving problems for other artists who didn’t know their chosen medium as well as I did. That moment and others helped me see I wanted to be in control of my future, and I shifted my pursuits towards more meaningful endeavors that placed my studio work at the forefront of my concerns. This position gave me invaluable experiences that, to this day, support the logistics of my work, made for incredible stories, and helped me reassess my goals.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers
I am a visual artist, educator, and organizer based in Kansas City, Missouri. Through painting, architectural installations, sculpture, collage and photography, I seek to understand and intervene in constructed environments, the history of place, perceptual dynamics and site. These ‘sites’ include found books and images, architectural interiors, building facades, and gallery venues.
‘Site’ became the focus of my practice while in-residence at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans (2017). I became attuned to the disparate ideologies in the ‘Big Easy’ to those found in my hometown, specifically regarding the ethics of place, history of commerce, and dynamics related to urban restoration. I found New Orleans to be a city collaged together because of displacement and generations of independent renovations.
To locate myself within this history, I researched aerial images of the city in hopes of better understanding civic choice-making and order that, from street-level, was obscured by layers of overgrowth. Google Earth helped me reduce the ornate Creole architecture to a modular structural language that countered my observations with concrete precision.
In response, I began a series of collaged photographs that investigate the parallel processes of building and rebuilding. In the conSTRUCT and reSTRUCTURES Series I photograph grayscale paper forms against faux architectural surfaces, then cut and layer them according to observed rhythms in urban topographies. The resulting shifts in light, architectonic form, and shadow create new fractured geometries that, today, inform multi-media installations mediating site-specificity, abstraction, representation, fact, and fiction.
I am proud of the mix of experiences and acknowledgements I’ve received over fifteen years. I am the recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant, the Charlotte Street Foundation Fellowship, and residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Joan Mitchell Center, and Ucross Foundation. My paintings and drawings are published in Art in America and New American Painting, and have been exhibited at venues including the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Grand Arts (KC), Weatherspoon Art Museum (NC), and Tiger Strikes Asteroid (NY). My work is included in the public collections of the Nerman MoCA, University of Kansas Medical Center, and Polsinelli Law Firm (KC). I received a MFA with an emphasis in Painting from Montana State University-Bozeman and a BFA from Northwest Missouri State University, double-majoring in Painting and Ceramics. I am represented by HAW Contemporary in Kansas City, where I have been privileged to present work in solo and group exhibitions in their two locations.
And my wife and I are privileged to be the parents of Bridger and Genessee, our curious, compassionate children who give reason to our ambitions.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
My creative journey is driven by elemental goals – the desire to build lasting relationships with galleries and museums in prominent national and international cities, to be in dialogue with my contemporaries, to work at an architectural scale to enter into new conversations with urban spaces and the people who inhabit them, and to work collaboratively with curators, designers, architects and artists to bring forth work at the intersections of these fields. I dream of having my work included in prominent private and museum/public collections where my work reaches broader audiences and shares space with my idols.
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?
Artists encounter non-creatives approaching art by asking “What is this suppose to be?” I dislike this question for how it’s probing for literal subject matter, and how it limits rather than initiates understanding. The content of a creative practice is often subjective and grounded in observations, critical analysis, responses to the canon of art history, and a grappling with materials and processes. Non-creatives would gain more from creatives if conversations could unfold when inviting artists to share their influences and intentions. This would help dispel stereotypes and allow non-creatives to identify parallels between their experiences and an artist’s intention.
Contact Info:
Image Credits
Photographs by the artist, Logan Hamilton Acton, E.G. Schempf, and Zane Scott Smith. All works courtesy of HAW Contemporary, Kansas City.