Susie Taylor
My work explores geometric abstraction through the tradition of weaving, a process that requires a creative and technical mindset to solve visual and structural puzzles. Imagery, rendered by the interlacing of warp and weft, is embedded in the very structure of the cloth. The interplay of yarns produces discernible color tones and textures that support a deeper exploration of translucency, opacity, saturation and dimension.
Inspired by Formalism and the Bauhaus, my compositions include basic shapes like blocks and stripes to address pattern, symmetry and color interaction, and the notion that ordered systems can still flirt with chance, interruption, and improvisation.
Sophia Kinell writes: “I love textile and I love a grid — works that are inherently precise, ordered, and meticulous in their construction. I immediately think of Annie Albers here who said, ‘simplicity is not simpleness but clarified vision.’ Susie Taylor is a Bay Area-based artist, and looks not only to Albers but also Sol Lewitt, Agnes Martin, Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly. Her work was recently included in Material Meaning: A Living Legacy of Anni Albers at Craft in America Center in Los Angeles.” – Phillips.com, May 20, 2022
Susie Taylor weaves abstract and dimensional textiles. She has exhibited her work across the U.S. as well as in international fiber art and contemporary textile biennials in China and Ukraine. Her solo and group exhibitions include Origin Stories and Hardcore Threadlore at Johansson Projects (Oakland); Altered Perceptions at ICA San Jose; Poetic Geometry at Textile Center Minneapolis; Material Meaning: A Living Legacy of Anni Albers at Craft in America Center (Los Angeles); Fiber Art: 100 Years of Bauhaus at Art Ventures Gallery (Menlo Park, CA); and Weaving At Black Mountain College: Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students” at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, curated by Michael Beggs and Julie Thomson. Taylor is the recipient of a Handweavers Guild of America, Certificate of Excellence in Handweaving Level 1 and received an HGA Award for Beautiful Struggle at the National Fiber Direction 2015 at the Wichita Center for the Arts. She was awarded an HGA Award and the Innovation Award at Focus: Fiber 2014 at the Erie Art Museum. Other notable exhibitions include: Materials Hard and Soft, Greater Denton Arts Center, Fiber Arts VII, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Eastern Michigan University Gallery, and New Voices in Weaving, Contemporary Crafts Gallery (Portland). Her work was recently acquired into the de Young Museum’s permanent collection (San Francisco) and has been published in The LA Times, American Craft, Fiberarts, FiberArt Now, The Textile Eye, Complex Weavers Journal, Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, Handwoven, Journal of Weavers Spinners & Dyers and The Bulletin (Guild of Canadian Weavers) magazines.
A Festival of Fiber Art | December 6, 2023 by David M. Roth for Square Cylinder
“The exhibition’s most compelling works come from the loom of Susie Taylor, an artist whose mounted-on-canvas weavings expand and reinvigorate the legacy of Pointillism, Bridget Riley, Anni Albers, Frank Stella, Richard Anuszkiewicz and Agnes Martin. Those that captured my attention — Open Box, Stacked Box and Interlocking Boxes — generate op-ish effects that derive from mash-ups of clashing patterns, gray-scale tonalities, faint whiffs of color and abrupt shifts in directionality, scale and rhythm, such that relationships between interior and exterior space shift continuously. Since reproductions largely fail to communicate the character of this activity, the best analogy I can offer is the music of Philip Glass in which rhythmic patterns are set up and disrupted at irregular intervals by still other patterns, inducing a kind of somnolent vigilance: waking trances in which you remain alert to whatever changes come next.” LINK
CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH | from Dutch Magazine, Weven
“Color theory is ingrained in my visual thinking, probably subconsciously. Other factorslike opacity,saturation, gradation and high-contrast play a role in my work. Sometimes Iapproach color in a very straightforward way, thinking about variations of primary,complementary or analogous combinations. Other times, I approach color in a moreintuitive way and this way proves more challenging. Also, some work begs to be rendered insimple black and white where high-contrast delivers the best outcome. Color mixing occursnaturally in weaving as the yarns cross over and under each other, resulting in discernabletones that mix in the eye, not unlike pointillism. My goal is to settle on colors that satisfy thevisual problem that I am trying to solve.”
The Grid Revisited | May 1, 2023 by David M. Roth for Square Cylinder
“One paints, the other weaves, but in this show they seem to trade roles, with Taylor’s textile “painting” affecting the look of hard-edge geometric abstraction and Grabner’s warped grids of pastel dots mimicking the look of a child’s faded blanket.” LINK
Op and its Offshoots | April 13, 2023 by David M. Roth for Square Cylinder “Taylor, you soon realize, is more than just a skilled textile artist. After years of research into materials, shapes and colors, she’s also become something of a phenomenologist.” LINK
San Jose artist Susie Taylor weaves wonders for ICA’s new show| April 6, 2023 by Sal Pizarro for The Mercury News
“Taylor says traditional weaving like her work was a precursor to modern computing…Her series “Iconic Stripes” is filled with social commentary. Look closely and you might see legal pads, referee stripes and caution tape. ICA Executive Director James G. Leventhal considers Taylor a San Jose treasure …she is having something of a breakout moment in her career, having recently been picked up by Johansson Projects gallery in Oakland…” LINK
Deceptively Flat Weavings by Artist Susie Taylor Interlace Threads into Playful and Nostalgic Patterns | October 16, 2022 by Grace Ebert for Colossal.com
“Patterns we might typically associate with childhood—the plaid vinyl lawn chairs of family barbecues, thick pink, brown, and white stripes of Neapolitan ice cream, and the simple ruled markings on notebook paper—become vibrant woven tapestries in the hands of artist Susie Taylor. Nostalgic in aesthetic and vivid in color palette, the Bay Area artist and textile designer interlaces cotton and linen threads to create flat weaves that appear almost three-dimensional in complexity, with the mathematically-inclined motifs and subtle shifts in color embedded within the pieces themselves.” LINK
How I got into weaving – Susie Taylor | Nov 29, 2020, The Loom Room
Interview LINK
The Weaving Workshop, “Weaving Origami / Susie Taylor” | 2016 The Common Thread
“It is challenging to place this work in a larger context. Obviously, it is dimensional weaving but my ambitions are to show my work alongside any artwork, including paintings. I don’t like all of the labels that get thrown around. I look at and am inspired by abstract and minimalistic painting and sculpture. I look to masters like Frank Stella, Sol Lewitt, Agnes Martin, Jan Schoonhoven and especially Josef Albers. What I like about these artists is that they were able to tap into the inherent and universal beauty of geometry.” LINK
Warp and Weft / Field Notes
“My work explores geometric abstraction with formalistic and minimalistic tendencies. Using basic building blocks, I address pattern, symmetry, proportion and positive/negative space. Often, I modify my process and equipment to achieve complex ideas with simple and/or unusual outcomes.” LINK
The Weave Shed UK / Susie Taylor
Artist Profile LINK
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Susie Taylor / Swatch Series / 2024
Our culture is a rich fabric woven with metaphors that reflect our deepest needs and desires for connection. We strive to live in ‘tight knit communities’, ‘tie the knot’ in marriage, and seek those ‘cut from the same cloth’. We all have a fundamental need to feel connected to something larger than ourselves.
The world wide web promised a future of greater access to friends and family and yet many people find themselves starved for real connection. We put forward a curated impression of our lives on social media, while the messy, loose ends are hidden. We share fragments of ourselves but don’t reveal the whole picture leaving the imagination of others to fill in the rest.
The Swatch Series offers a visual metaphor for these fragmented experiences. Exaggerated weave structures suggest the endless repetition of patterns and connection in our lives. Each piece represents a small sample of our lives, a neighborhood or community that is part of a larger social fabric. These Swatches can be seen as symbolic remnants of a larger tapestry that at times feels threadbare.
Yet, within these fragments lies a positive message. In a world hungry for connection, this work serves as a reminder of the threads that bind us together. These Swatches showcase the fragmented nature of our experiences while suggesting a longing for the wholeness and unity that can be found through genuine connection with others. By elevating weave structure to the realm of art, the viewer is reminded of the beauty and meaning in the seemingly insignificant pieces of our lives while contemplating the visual metaphor of the interconnectivity of something larger than ourselves, an intricate tapestry of life.
