Briana Taylor: Red Work

November 12 - December 6, 2017
Reception: Sunday, November 12, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Taylor’s work exists in the intersection of traditional quilt practices, modern art, modern style and design.
 
Artist Statement
Over the last ten years, Briana Taylor’s work has alternated between painting and textile arts with a focus on modern quilting and design. In her research and work she has developed a keen interest in the intersection of traditional quilt practices, modern art, modern style and design.
 
After seeing a red and white New York Beauty quilt at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA, she was compelled to recreate the complex 1870’s quilt with no useable pattern and using only the tools available at that time. During this period she became interested in Redwork, a style of red embroidery introduced in the United States around 1880 from the Royal School of Art Needlework in Kensington, England. The embroidery typically depicted cute scenes of birds, puppies and little children playing games in very simplistic linear style.
 
Approaching Redwork with modern focus, Ms. Taylor became interested in using the medium as a way to reflect her own time and influences on her style from an emotional base.Drawing from her mother’s journal, written just after her father’s death in 2001, and before her mother’s death in 2009, she used her mother’s words and “found” vintage photographs to attempt to illustrate the undercurrent of loss and loneliness.  She also drew from a collection of letters from the early 20th Century.