Smorgasbord
Han Taylor
December 8, 2024 – January 5, 2025
Upstairs Classroom
Newport Visual Arts Center
OPENING RECEPTION
Sunday, December 8, 2-4pm
Featuring music by the Sweet Adelines, light refreshments, artist introductions.
Mixed-media on paper, watercolor and ink.
Han Taylor is a multimedia artist living and working in Newport, Oregon. Their artwork highlights American opulence, childlike wonder, and the everyday kitsch. It is a celebration of the outrageously mundane.
With a BFA in traditional printmaking (University of North Texas, 2015) and a lifetime of curiosity for illustration, Han has long been drawing “silly pictures,” creating comics and drawings as far back as they can remember.
The work featured in this exhibition, Smorgasbord, was a departure from a period of total abstraction in their work. This decision was made after a breakthrough in which their mentor, artist Carol Ivey (of Fort Worth, Texas) said, “paint the picture as only you can paint it.”
Growing up in Fort Worth, Texas (“Cowtown”), Han had a childhood diet heavy on processed meats and always associated them with American identity and ideology. Never a big meat lover, Han struggled with concepts of nutrition and finding ways to eat a more plant-based diet in a meat-centric community.
Fast food was not a major staple of their childhood – but viewed as an indulgence and a treat apart from homemade, traditional, southern cooking. Viewing it now, they see it both as a last resort (late nights after work) and a decadence (eating out).
The decision to glorify the ordinarily mundane was consciously influenced by their hero, artist Claes Oldenburg, known for gigantic sculptures of everyday items. Other influences of this style – of course, Andy Warhol’s soup can serigraphs, the ridiculous yet iconic depiction of food in children’s cartoons (such as Charlotte’s Web, Scooby Doo, and Looney Tunes) – also influence their work.
The appeal of food in artwork is kitsch, but also leans heavily on the trope of the starving artist. If artwork is ultimately consumed by the public to feed the artist, is it not a commodity?
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