ARTIST ARTICLE Vol.4

Taylor Duce

by Christy Dowd
Color and movement. Throughout the work of San Antonio based Taylor Duce, you will find these two characteristics in abundance. You might even ask yourself “Can she paint with all the colors of the wind?”. Her work provides a strong visual stimulus that is consistently manipulating the viewer into stretching their imagination. From bold colored wasp nest sculptures to sugar glass deer horns, the brilliance is in the voice that speaks so clearly through it all. I sat down with Taylor in her home, a beautifully decorated upstairs apartment with big windows and hardwood floors, where she lives with her husband, Joseph, and their dog, Dina, to talk with her about her work and to learn more about the person behind the canvas.

As we chatted about what it meant to her to be an artist, her work and art in general, the word organic came up more often than any other. Which isn’t surprising, considering her natural disposition to only be who she is and never anything else. Taylor is a sweet, warm girl with an effervescent personality. For her, art is about the story of the material she’s working with and intuitively trying to convey something deeper than just what the surface presents. There are, of course, details and nuances that every artist brings to their work, but this emphasis on highlighting the underbelly of commonality is where her work begins and ends. As such, there is almost always a duality, sometimes ironic or satirical, to her work. That’s not to say it’s intentional, but while we spoke she mentioned how funny she found most of the objects that inspire her, objects that most of us don’t even notice. It struck me that it’s as if these materials are the punch line, and she feels it her responsibility to tell us the joke or story behind it. To illustrate this point, consider one of Taylor’s most recent found objects turned artistic endeavor.

wasp's nest

Inspired by scale and how a wasp will actually construct the nest, Taylor began trying to emulate this very organic (there’s that word again) process by using inorganic materials, the brightly colored cut up plastic straws above. This, she says, is also an important element in her work. She’ll often find herself inspired by nature and want to explore that realm, but what‘s important isn’t recreating but rather, reinterpretation.

At a young age, Taylor discovered that she had the ability to visually reconstruct many of the things that interested her, but her artistic passions went far deeper than just replication. She learned early on that for her it was about the process and challenge of telling a story. Before she became the artist she is today, she studied to be a writer at the Jack Kerouac School of Embodied Poetics. There her writing was thick with metaphors that she felt were stronger as visuals, so she put down the pen and picked up the brush. It was then that she began the journey to the ideals and practices that would lead her to where she is today. She is still processing what being an artist really means and what that entails, which is a struggle that keeps her work fresh, honest and a little playful. She described her current philosophy as this: She is just a tool of God, exhausting the use of other tools, to bring light to the deep potential she sees in both ordinary and extraordinary occurrences.

You can see her exploration of this philosophy in the series she did based around circular constructions and their possibilities. She never planned on creating multiple pieces so squarely focused on circles but it happened, you guessed it, quite organically. She worked on these pieces over a two year time period during which she moved, ended one relationship and began another with her future husband. These pieces, however, aren’t concerned specifically with those events but with the resulting growth in Taylor. She says she doesn’t ever really plan her projects, but rather intuitively follows where they lead. Not unlike life, in which we all can make plans but are subject to the ever changing nature of circumstance and must adapt accordingly. This is one of the beauties of Taylor’s work. Rather than stifle herself in planning, she willingly and almost subconsciously allows adaptation to be the sole structure of her work.

circles 1 Her first painting in this series began as an examination of the imagination of circles. Their form and shape intrigued her, and she wanted to see where they could go and what they could do. She piled them on top of and around each other until they almost took on an entirely new form, yet they remained true to their shape. She then added intuitively placed paint drippings and used a palate knife to impress a hard edge. As she endured the challenges that life presents to us all and grew because of it, so too would whatever she was currently working on. The circles grew, they changed, they morphed and became something new but still paid homage to where they came from.

circle 2

Also in Taylor’s body of work is a uniquely fascinating piece. It is interesting because of it’s eventual demise. Out of sugar glass, which is commonly used by cake decorators, Taylor painstakingly created a single deer horn. The process, which is similar to glass blowing, is lengthy and must be executed precisely in order to create objects worthy of the time invested. She researched deer horns and their place in nature, and what she found is that most often when a deer sheds his horns, animals eat them or hunters and collectors mount them in their homes. Taylor’s goal was to create a horn that could be used in exactly the same way it would be in the wild but out of a material opposite it’s actual composition. She found the perfect medium in the sugar glass, which is pliable for a period of time before it hardens. Once created, Taylor mounted the horn in her home on a plate she found at a thrift store. Serendipity occurred not long after, when the shadow cast by the sugar glass horn created a two horn display that would cause envy in any hunter’s heart. Then, she watched it melt. Your average artist would probably scramble to save their work by moving it to a new location or storing it somewhere safe, but not Taylor. Taylor isn’t concerned with numbers when it comes to her body of work and doesn’t need to hold on to every piece she creates as proof that it happened and she did it. Most important to Taylor is not what she can do, but what can be done. It’s inspiring, and rare, to see someone work so hard to create such beautiful things simply for the sake of bringing a little more beauty into the world, to tell stories we may never have heard, and to realize the potential of banal objects without trying to shine them up into something they never were.

If there is a more accurate representation of an organic (last time, I promise!) artist, I haven’t seen it yet. Taylor is constantly working, thanks to the abundance of inspiration readily available all around her. Although she has had many successes with her work and shows, she remains humble about it and is instead more thankful for the happiness she’s found outside of the art world. She is currently working on her undergrad at The University of Texas at San Antonio and San Antonio Community College. She doesn’t have any shows currently planned, and although she would welcome and be grateful for the opportunity, it shouldn’t be surprising by now that Taylor isn’t fixated on showing her work. Her goals are simple. They’re all about growth, in herself and her work, revelation, and constantly bringing herself back to the fact that her art isn’t about her.

I expect that we will continue to see gorgeous work from Taylor,
and I for one can’t wait to see what story she’ll tell next.

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