2018 & 2019 Recipient of the Sustainable Arts Fellowship
Michael K. Taylor is a project-based artist primarily developing interactive artworks using sculpture, performance, and audience interactivity. His artistic practice is founded in researching and experiencing communities, environments, and social theories as primary influences for narrative-based works. Material, color, line, and form are used as metaphors referencing a wide range of subject matter from observing physical movements of people within a community to re-articulating site-specific history into speculative fiction futuristic narratives.
Most recently, Taylor has been working toward bringing together his art-making, researching, and teaching into art projects that function as archives for art history and community experiences. In the last few years, he’s traveled to countries such as Japan, Haiti, England, and France doing research into institution, academic, and community archives.
As he’s continued his work over the years, his primary questions have been, what are some ways humans have creatively archived and shared the human experience outside of art-making and art history? Can those strategies and approaches be reincorporated into contemporary art practices and used to increase the accessibility of artists’ perspectives back into a diverse general public? Can I find creative ways to maximize that accessibility to under-served communities using sensory stimulating art strategies and aesthetics? He is now pursuing answers to these and other questions through his art-making practice.
Additionally as an experienced educator and performer, he is greatly interested in how art education and interactivity can function like a medium or media in an art practice that gives back to its audience.