The first book on Alison Elizabeth Taylor, known for her daring fusion
of wood inlay technique with gritty, dystopian scenes of deserts,
casinos and cocktail lounges
Repudiating distinctions between craft and high art, and transcending
both marquetry (wood inlay) and painting, the meticulously crafted works
of Alison Elizabeth Taylor are as much about seeing as they are about
making. Juxtaposing the over-the-top connotations of this ancient craft
with dystopian images of blighted 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 consider the innate
humanity of marginalized subjects we might otherwise overlook as well as
the often-ignored impact of a boom-and-bust economy on American life and
culture.
Featuring insightful essays by leading curators and writers, this fully
illustrated publication traces the evolution of the artist's work from
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, to brand-new and increasingly complex works inspired by the
resilience of the artist's urban neighborhood and community during the
pandemic.
Raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Alison Elizabeth Taylor (born 1972)
received her MFA from the Graduate School of the Arts, Columbia
University in 2005. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the
world. In 2009, she received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award
and the Smithsonian's Artist Research Fellowship Program Award. Taylor
lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
