Demonstrating Concepts for Design, The Democratization of Art and Paying LIP Service to the Past

Here is my latest post based upon my discussions with Loz taylor:

New Projects:
On Tuesday 10th June 2008, Loz (Lawrence)Taylor wrote on his blog:

“After completing two albums of digital images I think the time is right to start working on individual projects. Some of my ideas with be executed on photo/art paper via the computer - some in 3D - and some will take other forms“.

If  this was to be the germination of a new direction for Taylor then the seed itself had perhaps been planted  a few years before when he had one of his digital images “True Love” made into a high quality hand tufted rug,  seemingly a “one off” at the time but it exposed a willingness to explore his potential to diversify into the manufacture of  both practical and decorative items that  would showcase his art and it’s SACRED* values.

I am today once again in conversation with my friend Mr Loz Taylor and we are looking   briefly at what he is currently producing.  With Taylor, however this is a conversation which has two distinct levels, because as a “producer of Art” he does not merely focus on today and the new creation but also on the perpetuity of  what has been created before. For Taylor when he produces a work he does not simply move on consigning it to the dusts of memory or feigned embarrassment but, as we will see later due to his unique production methods he keeps it forever alive as a part of what is happening in the now.  

As to the new creations, over the second coffee of the morning Taylor tells me that in his work “Design is playing almost as important a role as art right now” and looking around his studio there are plenty of prototypes already on show that back up that claim, with even more in the design stage! However as I have previously hinted this is not a sudden hopeful leap of faith but something that has pervaded Taylor’s work for at least the last three years. After completing the “True Love” rug Taylor went on to design a set of “Demo Pop Art jewellery“ in October 2008 consisting of a ring, bracelet and earrings based on his beloved greyhound colours. Then in December 2008 he produced a set of 20 “playing” cards which were printed on one side with his image “We Found Diamonds” and on the reverse with the ace of diamonds, he even designed and produced the box!

If these earlier efforts saw Taylor operating pretty much within his comfort zone, his most recent excursions into design are much more ambitious both in their design and in their final intended application.

March 2011: Clock, Taylor designs a working clock, once again utilizing the six greyhound colours as the clock’s hour segments, how he did this with only six colours I will leave to the man himself to explain:

 “The main stumbling block was the numbers on the clock ranging from seven to eleven. One to six take care of themselves, as they are the colours of greyhound racing jackets (red = 1, blue = 2, white = 3, black = 4, orange = 5 and black/white stripes = 6). And the figure twelve, at the top of the clock, is simply two sets of b&w stripes overlapping each other – one vertical and one horizontal“.

“For the higher numbers, the simple solution would seem to be to add the colours for, say, five and two, to represent the number seven, and the numbers six and two, or five and three, to arrive at a representation of the number eight on the clock, but problems would surface when I wanted to represent the figures ten and eleven, as this would require the use of the ‘six’ stripes for each of the figures – thus displaying too many stripes on the left hand side of the clock“.

“Trying to keep as much symmetry in the design as possible, I mirrored the colours of the inner segments from the right hand side of the clock, so that the left hand side of the clock had those colours too. Then it was simply a matter of duplicating the middle and outer colours from the opposite side of the clock design to give me the required numbers“.

“For example, the number seven is represented by an inner orange segment (value=5) plus the middle and outer colour segments from the number 1 (5+1+1=7). The number eleven is represented by an inner red segment (value=1) plus the middle and outer segments from the number five (1+5+5=11). And so on“.

“The main colour code rule is that the segmented colours on the right hand side of the clock are not added together, but those segmented colours on the left hand side of the clock are“.

April 2011: Dogs of War Chess Set:
Taylor takes his original concept piece “Dogs of War” and finally adds the third dimension by creating the actual physical chess set .

Taylor says “ ‘Dogs Of War' is a chess set design based on the colours of jackets worn by racing greyhounds, which represent, to me, ambition, competition and risk. A lot of my digital works make use of this concept, including 'Young Blades Are Just so Glam' and 'The Audition’”

May 2011: Greyhound dice footstool:
Taylor inspires the creation of a practical piece where once again the physical adaptation mirrors exactly the concept, i.e. a cubed footstool is encased in fabric creating the effect of a huge dice in greyhound jacket colours:

“Belinda Longsden, of White Tree Gallery fame, has manufactured a fantastic 'greyhound dice' footstool for me. It's a big, bold design that would look great in a contemporary setting“.

All these developments are of course documented on Taylor’s blog http://stored-images.blogspot.com/

Taylor is keen to progress the idea of Demo Pop Art as a design forum and is very keen to foster associations with local Artisans to produce his ideas. As we have seen a local artist has just produced a new prototype for a footstool cover based on Taylor’s image of the “greyhound dice”. He looks out of his studio window with more than a passing interest in the view , one of his neighbours is the Wolverhampton Art College and they have made it known that they are looking to bring to manufacture designs by local artists. The ethos of the college being to engage businesses in the area to take these designs and produce the highest possible quality items for the marketplace.

There is an obvious drive to Taylor, the distinct impression of a man who feels he is constantly running against time and wants to stay a stride in front.  Clues to the reason for this drive lie perhaps in comments delivered within the first couple of minutes of our meeting  when he says “It is so hard to get your work into a mainstream gallery whatever the medium, it is no good me waiting for an invitation that may never come”.


Designer Outlets for Designer Artists
So how do you get your Art out there among the people? Firstly, it is clear Taylor does not believe that there is an upper echelon of Educated Art appreciators and an underclass of plebeians who will never “get” what is being offered up to them. He feels that people can come to art at any time or status in their lives and that when they do, “good” art a phrase he uses often should be available to them and at an affordable price! To explain whilst attempting to avoid sounding like an advertisement for quality soft furnishings, Taylor wants, next to approach high quality Interior design outlets such as that of Tom Dixon, (a British designer and manufacturer committed to innovation and the revival of the British Furniture Industry), as a channel for this purpose especially as a greater proportion of his work is leaning toward Art and design He furthermore believes that “A lot more serious Art will in future be sold through these outlets than will through galleries, thus giving Art and Design more of an equal status with other forms of commercial art and helping to cap the cost at which art is sold”

Taylor firmly believes that selling Art in this way will make it ultimately less elitist and more accessible which can, he says only be to the benefit of Both Art and the Artist alike.

Taylor stays tight Lipped On his distribution Techniques
Stored Images, Loz Taylor’s company produces what he terms Limited Issue Prints or LIPS whereby he produces one print of each of his works per month. He feels that structuring the release of his prints in this way helps “feed the democratization of Art” fitting perfectly between the exclusivity and finite nature of “limited edition” prints and the high, market saturating levels achieved by “open edition” prints.

Printing one “edition” of each image each month in this way Taylor believes he is keeping the ownership of the image exclusive enough to satisfy the discerning collector, whilst at the same time not making each print too readily available. In this then we have a situation whereby the Artist is setting the level of exclusivity, scope or range of production, keeping his printing run at this level Taylor feels he can retain control and still have the freedom to be creative and “drive” forward.

Another benefit that Taylor feels his system brings is that it will never disappoint future collectors who may come upon his work at a later time. In this event Taylor’s work would still be in production and still affordable, whereas a limited edition print would perhaps be in short supply or completely unavailable, it’s run having possibly been curtailed many years before.

Pride: in the name of love
Taylor grins at this point and I know he is about to reveal to me a slightly guilty pleasure. He tells me that one of the things that pleases him on a personal level with regard to LIPS is the way in which his method echoes “popular culture” you can after all have a march edition of one of his prints in the same way as you can buy the march edition  of  Hello Magazine.  It is as much as it could possibly be, of the moment, immediate and it ultimately perpetuates the contemporaneousness of the work itself. Always new and vibrant the timeline and the history of the piece is also preserved. Taylor is in this way I feel a little like a proud parent enjoying the progress of his progeny but not wanting it to stray too far from home.

Typically of someone enraptured by representing truth and beauty in the here and now, and gifting it to the wider world with the greatest expediency, Taylor balks at the idea of producing a piece of work he loves and seeing it’s development thwarted by being left to gather dust in the corner of an attic, or worse left to “rot” for all time in the basement of an Art Gallery.

At this point in our conversation Taylor’s mobile goes off and he receives an enquiry from one of his many followers on Twitter, it demands his immediate and continued attention and therefore brings to an end another of our very enjoyable sessions so I bid him goodbye and make my way out of his studio.

However on my journey home I find myself reflecting further on my friend’s methods and the careful reasoning behind them and it occurs to me that far more than simply a practical methodology they are a testament to the way Taylor thinks about how his Art fits into the world of both his current and potential audience.  In his plans he has considered no only the current art dealer and/or collector but also the person of possibly moderate means who either now or in years to come decides that they are looking for something aesthetically pleasing and affordable, whilst at the same time has something real to say. After all they do say, don’t they, that with maturity comes wisdom.



*SACRED Sex; Ambition, Competition, Risk, Endeavour and Death. These represent nothing less than Life itself for Taylor and are the themes that run through his impressive body of work to date. it is also the acronym which forms the basis for the Coat of arms of Stored Images, the company set up by Loz taylor to market and distribute his work.