Alison Elizabeth Taylor: The Sum of It

Alison Elizabeth Taylor is a renowned artist who combines wood inlay technique with gritty, dystopian scenes of deserts, casinos, and cocktail lounges. Her meticulously crafted works are as much about seeing as they are about making, juxtaposing the over-the-top connotations of this ancient craft with dystopian images. This fully illustrated publication traces the evolution of her work from early paintings to vividly colored "hybrids" that layer marquetry, paint, and photographic imagery.

Format: Hardback
Length: 128 pages
Publication date: 18 October 2022
Publisher: Distributed Art Publishers

Alison Elizabeth Taylor, a renowned artist known for her audacious fusion of wood inlay technique with gritty, dystopian scenes of deserts, casinos, and cocktail lounges, challenges the boundaries between craft and high art. Her meticulously crafted works transcend both marquetry (wood inlay) and painting, creating a visual experience that is as much about seeing as it is about making. By juxtaposing the extravagant connotations of this ancient craft with dystopian images of desolate desert landscapes, anonymous subdivisions, glitzy casinos, and seedy cocktail lounges, Taylor creates a tension between surface and subject, appearance and reality. The splendor of the shellacked wood invites us to contemplate the inherent humanity of marginalized individuals we might otherwise overlook, as well as the often-ignored impact of a boom-and-bust economy on American life and culture.

This fully illustrated publication traces the evolution of Taylor's work from her early paintings that explore space, line, color, and form within the limited palette afforded by the grains and tones of natural woods to vividly colored "hybrids" that layer marquetry, paint, and photographic imagery. It also showcases her brand-new and increasingly complex works inspired by the resilience of her urban neighborhood and community during the pandemic.

Raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Alison Elizabeth Taylor received her MFA from the Graduate School of the Arts, Columbia University, in 2005. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the world, and she has received prestigious awards such as the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award and the Smithsonian's Artist Research Fellowship Program Award. Taylor currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

Weight: 1014g
Dimension: 289 x 248 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781636810546