A Short History:

I started making sake bottles out of rectangular slabs of clay.

Eventually some of the vessels got bigger and others got smaller. From little perfume bottles to vessels for decanting  wine to water bottles.

Later I started decorating the bottles with drawings and paintings. Flowers and landscapes and people I knew. I did a box of spirit tiles with drawings of people who have had a influence on me as an artist.

At some point I began seeing groups of vessels like little families.

Then 2020 came, bringing with it a plague, a virus, a pandemic...

Isolation, fear, depression, anxiety...

An epidemic of hatred of the other soon followed…

I started to draw my own image on the bottle/structures…

I knew certainly as a Black man, my self-images would be viewed in some level of political light. I realized that most of my images were on white clay. It pointed again toward a political statement.

I started working in brown clay and with brown slips, in addition to continuing to work on a white background. What does this work say about me, or about Black men in general? What does it have to say about the city? Interesting questions, I wonder how people will answer them.

George Taylor

PEACE IN CHAOS

In my life I’ve often experienced chaos. Yet I have always sought peace within through meditative practices such as art-making, music-making, cooking, Kenjutsu (Japanese swordsmanship), and ritual practice as a Sohei (priest) of Shugendo Buddism.

Then Came 2020

Slightly paranoid to start with, I had heard about a virus in China from the World News on TV. I was upset, but not very surprised when the virus started traveling.

I was teaching ceramics at Fairleigh Dickinson University and, when spring break hit, everyone left campus and did not return. Since then, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time alone in my home studio.

This pandemic, however, was not the only threat to humankind over the past year. More people gained awareness of the ongoing violence committed against Black men and of the general hatred and fear of people of color.

In the midst of this recurring trauma, I began surrounding myself with images of what I knew best... myself. These self-representations first appeared in drawings and paintings, and are now being executed in clay on flat surfaces and bottle-like structures.

I first began making these slab bottles for sake, water, and perfume more than ten years ago and later utilized these bottles as surfaces to draw and paint upon. At first, I drew flowers and landscapes, and, more recently, people.

I began to organize the bottle structures in small groups. These groups started to look like buildings in a cityscape, and the images took on a graffiti-like effect.

Self-representation by a Black male artist is in itself a political act. It is even more heightened during an epidemic of prejudice, racism, sexism, political unrest and hatred, all intertwined with a deadly pandemic.

I cannot hide from the chaos, so I continue to search for inner peace. This work, then,  is an exterior manifestation of my inner self.

George Taylor