Artist Bio
Grey Taylor is a Chicago and Cleveland based ceramic artist that creates sculptural pieces that focus on character design and worldbuilding elements. They create mystical, dreamlike creatures that focus on the emotional and sentimental value given to them throughout the sculpting process.
Artist Statement
Growing up in the middle of the woods, I struggled to connect and communicate with others. I spent most of my youth with my toys imagining different adventures for us to go on together. While still dealing with my own feelings of isolation today, I tend to use the time spent alone in my head imagining a dreamland where I can interact with various magical beings and create an own little world that they can exist in.
Through handbuilding techniques, I try to bring these creatures to life by creating ceramic sculptures of them. Using clay along with other sculpting materials, I create the original environment these creatures exist in when they are not in the human world. For the character designs of each figure, I contrast the feelings of warmth and comfort with unsettling and melancholic undertones.
Through the obsessive amount of time spent in the studio, I leave behind a part of myself in my pieces. I tenderly develop each creature's feelings, personality, and overall storyline purely out of the sentimental bond that I grow with them throughout the sculpting process. By the end of the creation process, each figure comes to life in their own way with the energy and emotions I subconsciously transfer into them from myself.
While the connection I make with my sculptures is personal to me, my goal in creating art is also for others to also be able to feel an underlying bond and friendship with my creatures, even if they cannot completely understand why they feel that way.
