Bethany Taylor

(Amazon Rainforest, Northeast United States and The Arctic)
Jacquard Woven Tapestries and fiber-based drawing
2021-2022

I love the idea about the integrity of a line, or a thread that can be woven into an image (or an “ecology of strands”) can then be destroyed and unraveled, and then rewoven again into something new.

This idea of transforming a single strand of thread is a wonderful metaphor for the interconnectedness of everything. Textile fibers imply a state of flux, or in my work a constantly changing, and fragile ecology in a time of dramatic change.

an ongoing series of drawings;
liquid graphite, ink, soap, water and breath on paper
2021-present

ICU beds lined up in rows in hospitals, parking lots and stadiums have infiltrated my dreams as of late. The relentless and tragic stories of love, isolation and loss during this past year of COVID-19 haunt me as I continue to recover ever so slowly from the grief of my mother’s passing to metastatic brain cancer just one year prior. The hospital or hospice bed, an apparatus designed to perpetually await a healing or dying body is a necessary architecture that has become very vivid to me. These drawings imagine the space surrounding the ICU bed; a space that takes into account silence, distortion, the passing of time, and presence and absence simultaneously.

The drawings are made in a large part by chance, embracing the uncontrollable properties of liquid graphite, ink, soap, water and breath on paper.

site-specific drawing/collage, 2019

Temporary drawing/collages on found wall of a 1767 Georgian building (and old RIC barracks) - part of a series of site-specific photographs/wall drawings I created during a week long artist residency at Greywood Arts, Killeagh, Ireland, 2019

In folklore, ravens often appear in pairs as collectors of knowledge and harbingers of tragic news and death. I always notice the presence of ravens more often when visiting sites where stories of violence, grief and loss are prominent. This was true during my time staying at Greywood Arts Residency, an old RIC barracks which was burned by the IRA in 1920.

“There is wisdom in a raven’s head.”
– Gaelic Proverb

a series of emblematic tapestries
Jacquard woven drawings
2016-present

To Write in Silent Marks is a series of tapestries presenting image and text scenarios as a warning to a culture involved in over-consumption, exhibiting misuse of power and resources, and posing as an ongoing threat to wildlife and the environment. The tapestries are both poetic and didactic and serve as a collection and meditation on everyday activities, behaviors and ordinary current events that have a significant impact on the culture and environment. They are warnings for how we continue to live in ways that are detrimental to our future.

The works are loosely based on 16th - 18th century moral tapestries and Alciato’s book of emblems.  Historically tapestries defined moral codes of a community and became psychologically embedded in everyday life as well as part of a one’s cultural inheritance. During a similar time period as these types of tapestries were popular, Andrea Alciato's Emblematum liber or Book of Emblems had enormous influence and popularity. Alaciato wrote 212 emblems (Image and text based illustrations) dealing with virtues and vices, as well as humanistic subjects and aspects of  everyday life including such things as love, honor, death, fortune, peace, knowledge of science/nature and responsibility to self/country.

Some of the emblems were formulated with satirical purposes in mind, and others were purposely meant to be confusing (a great strategy to cause the typically passive viewer/reader ponder the visual poems a bit longer).   Many were closer to epigram or poem, than to the typical emblem, and the combination of text and image used ironically engaged the viewer in complex reflection and critical thinking.

The Jacquard woven drawings in this series are attempting to make a conceptual connection between the historical purposes of emblems and tapestries, and contemporary forms of cultural propaganda such as print and social media.  The series To Write in Silent Marks compresses the two forms into one, mimicking images sourced from current news and social media with the aesthetics, cultural and historical relevance of the emblematic tapestry in everyday life.

A site-specific installation for New Mexico State University Art Gallery: Jacquard digitally woven tapestries and fiber-based drawing
2016

River Unraveled presents a panoramic, horizonless New Mexico landscape in a time of dramatic climate change. The installation exploits the inherent ephemerality of digital images (in the form of digitally woven tapestries) but also the physical flux of the material world unavoidably experienced in the process of weaving and unraveling, drawing and potential re-drawing or erasure.

The five landscape tapestries presented in the installation are in a state of becoming unraveled, and are accompanied by emerging fiber-based drawings in transformed tapestry yarn.  The drawings tell an open-ended story of the fine line between life and death that the Rio Grande River represents. A center tapestry features the Rio Grande River and two large tapestries depict Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico, in 1994 and in 2013 presenting visible evidence and noticeable dramatic change in water depletion over the years.

The tapestries and interconnected drawings together present an ecology in flux, dependent on water and a healthy river.  It is a call for attention to the problem of water management, conservation and drought in New Mexico at a pivotal moment in a continuum of gradual consumption, destruction and loss.  This is an important moment to take into careful consideration: a time where life will be forced to adapt to a changing climate and landscape unless better care is taken to preserve life in the region through conservation, activism and innovation.

The Installation, pLASTic OCEAN, consists of transparent engraved drawings on discarded plastic, creating shadows and presenting dark eco-narratives existing as the trace of consumption. While the act of drinking bottled water may take 15 minutes or less, the waste plastic it leaves behind to accumulate in earth's ocean gyres takes 1000 years or more to disappear.  Although human everyday consumption is fleeting, its detritus is tragic and monumental.

Installation, Jacquard woven photo tapestries and fiber based drawings
2015

Influenced by sixteenth to eighteenth century European Tapestries, which depicted the forests, lakes, flora and fauna of a region, the exhibition, “Unraveling Ecologies” engages with the idea of landscape, not simply as idyllic or sublime, but rather always in flux, (for better or for worse).

The installation features several large landscape tapestries, seemingly becoming unraveled into complex and intermingling narratives situated in the rapidly melting artic, the deforested burning Amazon Rainforest and the polluted waters of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.  The landscape tapestries presented in this exhibition, unlike those in the past, serve not to present far off places we might visit, the beauty found in diverse landscapes, or simply and practically the land that we own, but rather implicate humans in narratives of consumption, destruction and loss; where life is forced to adapt to a changing climate and landscape or else become extinct.

The nature of the tapestry media utilized in the installation presents the possibility of an image capable of unraveling, or unbecoming, and the connected, ephemeral drawings of string are equally fragile and tentative.  The installation as a whole embraces the idea of inevitable decline, to remind us of the temporality of everything, urging us hopefully toward preservation.

Jacquard digitally woven photo tapestry and fiber-based drawing installation, 2014
installation variable size (approx. 9' x 24')

Runoff Verdure makes reference to sixteenth to eighteenth century European Verdure Tapestries, or literally “green” tapestries, which depicted the forests, lakes, flora and fauna of a region.  The verdure, or green, in this contemporary work, however, refers to the growing problem of increased phosphorus and nitrogen entering our once blue rivers, lakes, springs and oceans, creating dangerous blooms of toxic blue-green algae.  Like many other places in the world, Florida’s water is threatened each year by the poison runoff from pollution caused by inadequately treated sewage, pesticides, manure and fertilizer.  The toxic algae created by these unchecked industrial and agricultural practices, is literally choking our waterways, creating dead zones in our ecology that are harmful to both humans and wildlife.  Runoff Verdure is a Jacquard woven tapestry of a landscape from our local Santa Fe River, High Springs, Florida, highlighting the slimy, green, algae-surfaced water, and presenting a gentle reminder of our slowly unraveling ecology; interconnected, fragile and worth preserving.

Installation was exhibited September 16th - January 5th,  2014 at the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida, June 5 - 25, 2015 at (VAE) Visual Arts Exchange, Raleigh, NC and August 24 - October 4 at The Museum of Fine Art, Tallahassee, FL (where it received the first place award in the 30th Tallahassee International.)

ink on duralar, parking cone, and cut, recycled orange plastic safety fence, 74" X 32" X 20", 2014

"Nature does not exist."
              - Slavoj Žižek

digital photo, ink and varnish on duralar, 2014
each drawing is 11" X 14" (grid of 8 = 50" X 30")

watercolor on velvet, marble rock, pillowcase and fiber-based drawing, 2013
 

A place in between up and down, inside and outside, lightness and darkness, hardness and softness, wakefulness and dreaming, life and death...

“On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There’s no need to say another word.” 

—Jack Kerouac

digital photography, ink and oil on duralar, 2014

A series of abstracted images of crude-oil-soaked birds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

adaptable wall installation: engraved drawings on recycled plastic, 2009-2013

21st Century Albatross was inspired by research on the enormous amounts of plastics collecting in ocean gyres, I collect, crush and transform recycled plastic into engraved drawings of dead and gutted marine birds spewing plastic waste items from their bellies.  Meanwhile I image myself implicated in the narrative as I simultaneously dump plastic garbage onto my own daughter. 

This is the first work of several, referencing only one of the five ocean gyres of accumulating plastic waste.   This work will continue to grow, as human consumption continues to increase, and I hope to exhibit the work in the near future with all five ocean gyres referenced.

21st Century Albatross was featured in the Artworks for Change 2015 online exhibition, Art and Our Ecological Footprint, addressing the urgent need to live sustainably within Earth's finite resources.

Doing Fine on Cloud Nine, powdered graphite on vinyl, cloud-shaped, heavyweight punching bag with gloves, 2011

Clouds One Through Eight of Nine (punched), powdered graphite and ink on paper, 2011

Clouds One-Eight of Nine”, was inspired by mysterious images of “punched” clouds in the earth’s atmosphere. The idea that something so ephemeral as a cloud actually be “punched” or physically impacted merged with musings I have about the futility of believing in or fearing invisible forces. In contemporary culture, ideas about “the other” or “the enemy” often construct our politics and perspectives. In this work, I photographed weather clouds and appropriated images of smoke clouds caused by incendiary devices, and then physically punched the printed images with a boxing glove to destroy the surface. I then rendered the damaged, literally punched cloud photos on paper, using powdered charcoal and ink.  I named each drawing, cloud one-eight, each after one of several boxing terms (for example: cloud one of nine-contender, cloud two of nine-pitty pat punched, cloud six of nine-technical knockout, etc.)   

Accompanying the work was a related sculpture, “I’m Doing Fine on Cloud Nine” an actual white punching bag stand and vinyl bag transformed into a large, heavyweight, white cloud coated in powdered graphite.  Sparing with this normally ephemeral object, become heavyweight punching bag, is exhausting, and instead of having any impact at all on this performative object, users would inevitably be marked with charcoal, documenting on their own body their aggressive actions. The work is a drawing, in a sense, that actively makes marks on the viewer.

crocheted parachute cord and parachute, 2012

A narrative work about the day a rainbow gave up on it all and fell out of the Finnish sky...

A temporary outdoor sculpture created during a two month residency in Finland, exhibited at the Nelimarkka Museum, Alajärvi, Finland, July 2012.

black velvet soft sculpture AK-47, 2013

i'll take care of you (A.K.A. what's with macca?)

adaptable installation: exaggerated, over-sized replica of my daughter's doll named "macca" and fiber-based drawings, exhibited in different variations 2005-2007.

installation: dyed mops, cleaning bucket and fiber-based drawing, exhibited in various adaptations 2006-2008

String, apparently soaked with blood, was crafted into numerous line drawings of children and skeletons with mops in hand, air strikes, piles of grenades, toxic waste, and debris emerging from a pile of used mops. I was interested in the ambiguity of the phrase, “clean up” regularly used when referring to U.S. intentions to improve Iraq with a quick and uncomplicated operation.  However, it is a daily reality for people in war zones to move rubble, remove bodies and physically mop up the streets.  I was interested in using the phrase, “After the Cleanup” because it implied an end and a new beginning, but unfortunately as simple domestic maintenance teaches us, after cleaning there is always more cleaning to do. 

unwoven wallmart american flag blanket + glue on cotton rag paper, 2009

adaptable installation: human-sized pink chenille bunny with fishnet stockings, 12 small furry bunny coin purses dyed pink, red fiber-based drawings and accompanying video performance.
This installation was exhibited in different variations 2004-2007.

installation (video and digital photography)
2004

Appropriated media images of war and related political figures were transferred to a sculptural work simulating exaggerated rolls of flypaper.  Digitally manipulated photographs of house flies with human-like eyes, infest the surfaces of the images.  A hanging video monitor compliments the imagery creating a simulated version of an electronic flytrap, complete with the brand name, “The Executor”.  Emanating from this videotaped flytrap is not florescent light, however, but an endless composite video loop of flies being zapped and appropriated war footage.

unraveled, over-sized, terrycloth beach bag made from a classic florida alligator beach towel, with escaping cotton fiber-based drawings, 2009.
Exhibited again with new fiber-based drawings in 2012.

An installation suggesting the complexities of tourism and consumption and the inevitable impact of our actions on the natural environment.

"After all the suffering... and horror... I have witnessed... it is good... to see so many people... in one place... having a good time..."   

"Maybe the world has run out of room... for monsters... Or maybe they're just getting harder to recognize."

- Swamp Thing

a series of mixed media drawings/digital photos and collages, 13" x 19", 2013 - present.

The collage series, Everything Must Go…, investigates the transformation of natural resources into consumable products (water, food, and shelter) and the inevitable complexities involved in our interactions with the natural environment. Physically and digitally combining commercial text, images culled from personal images and media, and other manipulated materials, the resulting collage images suggest ephemeral, transformative and often destructive processes in a delicate balance.  The series presents political musings, surreal hybrid constructions and displacements, icebergs melting, pine beetle infestations due to global warming, technological attempts to preserve life, and the unfortunate bi-products and contradictions of human construction and consumption.

*more in this series to come...

installation: clear vinyl dress, metal rib cage, digital photography, LCD video of an "operation" game, and laminated tags, 2002

The Visible Woman

a contagion, preventative medicine, a spectacle, terminally unseen, traceless, nothing too outrageous, just a terrorist act, a fatal attraction, coming clean, face value, comfort zone, the skin your in, buy in, sell out, and how to fix them, dress to be killed, smile, look to the left, postpone desire, destroy authenticity, no purchase necessary, artificial life, smothered, shucking off, great escape, lust must, a televisionary, becoming, what’s in store, unsightly, feign indifference, make an appeal, invoice, eye opener, black lash, ambition remission, the price of it all, behind the scenes, relief effort, in the no, go with the faux, his left breast, her right, essence, slightly less mysterious than chemistry, a bare fact, a naked truth, the straight answer, road tested by real women, ultra correction, conceal, unprecedented ingredients, loud laugh, short temper, wild side, high dimension, coverage, shine control, sheerly you, barely there, maybe she’s born with it, a clean slate, take it to a better place, raise the volume, neutralize imperfections, minimize, the next generation, the money honey...

*Utilizing William Burroughs "cut-up method" I appropriated select text from random pages of three different fashion magazines and reconfigured the snippets into a poem reflective of the not-so subtle messages directed at women in this culture.