You Can Pester Me, But, I’m Sorry,
Some Of These Items Are Not For Sale!
A Look Forward To The East London Design Show.
Loz Taylor, Demo Pop Artist, is about to exhibit at the East London Design Show. He is hoping to catch the eye of some serious players in the home furnishings market (Liberty, Harrods, John Lewis, etc), as well as the art market (name any gallery you like that appreciates traceable ideas and a strong aesthetic).
Interestingly, then, there will be some items on his stand that will not be for sale.
Footstool and Cushions:
(An early montage of Taylor’s prototype of the Greyhound footstool)
A “Greyhound” footstool and cushions will be on display at the ELDS, but will not be for sale. Taylor is hoping that store buyers will come and test their quality, and enjoy the experience of sitting on them! A “True Love” rug, which he is hoping to produce on a larger scale, will also be on show.
Taylor also wants to promote the idea of making the limited issue print of “New York City Beat” into a large floor cushion.
Pester Me
A Modern Day Mona Lisa?
Twenty years ago Taylor found a photo of Tilda Swinton in a magazine and cut it out. Years later he was to manipulate it, add a background and four lines of poetry, and re-launch it as a Demo-Pop Art work called ‘Pester Me’.
Taylor would love to know who originally took the photograph so he could give it a full and appropriate accreditation. He would also like to know what Tilda Swinton herself thinks of it. The image now is a beautiful and semi surreal vision of a captivating woman, with piercing alien eyes that follow you wherever you go.
Taylor has set the image on a split level landscape, the “horizon” of which deliberately meets the face at the level of the mouth, adding to the enigmatic quality of what could be her smile? Taylor has also added four lines of equally enigmatic poetry to add further mystery to the pieces already ethereal quality.
At present the canvas image is stretched over pine bars. He has no intention of selling it, or even thinking of a price tag, until such time as he identifies the taker of the original photograph.
But it will be on display at the East London Design Show. So make sure you come along to see this modern day Mona Lisa.
The “Edie” Dress
Another item on the stand to be admired, but not yet purchased, is the “Edie” dress. Much flaunted on these diary pages in recent times, the dress is to be based on one of Taylor’s Demo-pop Art works titled “Young Blades Are Just So Glam”. The image is to be transformed into a vintage style 1960’s mini-dress. A work featuring a famous model who worked with the king of Pop Artists turned into a fashion dress designed by Loz Taylor, Demo Pop Artist, fitting isn’t it?
Having said that, the dress itself will be a thoroughly modern construction, a fashion item that is both stylish and practical unlike some fashion prototypes, the Edie dress will be made, and will be made to wear!
Taylor is currently organising the manufacture of two different prototypes. One is being made by screen printing the image/design directly onto the chosen material, while the other will be transferred onto the material by a textile printer. Although it is by no means a competition, it will be interesting to see how the two forms of manufacture “stack up” against each another.
Edith “Edie” Minturn Sedgwick (April 20, 1943 – November 16, 1971) was an American actress, socialite, model and heiress, who always wanted to be the “It Girl” of her time, and so she quickly became; she was a very ambitious young blade indeed, and was associated for some time with Andy Warhol. Indeed it could be said that it is because of this that Taylor chose her as the subject for his image, he certainly has an affinity with her, but we both realise as we talk that it runs deeper than that. Regardless of her associations, specifically with Warhol, Taylor is actually striving, almost unconsciously, to preserve a group of very select icons that all mean something to him personally, whether they are youth or childhood heroes, or figures for which he has great admiration.
Indeed looking at Taylor’s back catalogue of images, we can definitely see a real attempt by the artist to preserve these iconic stars forever in his artwork. His work has often included pieces that feature iconic figures as part of a “bigger” message that the artist was delivering at the time. It is interesting to record here that he chose these particular figures to help deliver those visual messages as opposed to contemporary faces in the public eye at the time the images were created.
Taylor has in fact created a kind of mini Demo Pop young blades gallery! Featuring images taken of these stars at the top of their game such as:
Michael Caine in “A Message From Munich”
Man Ray in “Man Ray Stops Bullets”
Andy Warhol in “Portrait of Andy Warhol”
We talk a little more about how some stars in music, like Amy Winehouse and Michael Buble, devote their careers to keep alive and adding to a certain genre of music, and it put me in mind of when I heard a radio show about Buble. The presenter was talking about when Buble was interviewing to sign with Reprise Records, who handled the back catalogue of the star that set up the label , one Frank Sinatra, when asked why they needed him when they already had Sinatra, Buble was reported to have said “Frank is dead, why let the music die with him?”
I am left to ponder as I leave my friend for this week, if he is not doing just that for Warhol in his absence, not copying, not striving to imitate, but fiercely determined to keep the Pop Art dream alive.
Richard Gibbons 06/11/2011
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