Sarah Mary Taylor - Don’t Mess with Me
Sarah Mary Taylor (1916–2000) is predominantly remembered as a vibrant and playful quilter, who stitched using the appliqué method leaving purposefully unfinished edges on her quilts. A lesser known but equally impressive body of work consist of several hundred works on paper that Taylor created with the simplest of materials– markers, graphite and crayons on paper. These drawings fueled her quilting practice by allowing her to generate stencils and simplified shapes and images to utilize in her sewn works, but they were also a completely independent art practice and now give context to her life experiences as a Southern Black woman in the mid-20th century..
Born in Anding, Mississippi in 1916, Taylor spent her childhood picking cotton on various plantations in the Mississippi Delta before eventually moving on to cooking and housekeeping for several families in the region until retiring later in life. As a child, she first learned to sew from her mother, Pearlie Posie, and she was also inspired by her aunt Pecolia Warner’s quilts; however, Taylor did not start quilting (or drawing) prolifically until after she was retired and found herself in need of a new source of income.
Don’t Mess with Me is a digital exhibition highlighting Sarah Mary Taylor’s works on paper, which constitute a major revelation in the fields of contemporary and self-taught art. Unconsciously, these drawings share a visual affinity with artists such as Karl Wirsum, Peter Saul, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Bill Traylor and Mike Kelley. Despite their initial charm and bright color palette, Taylor’s works explore serious (and extremely timely) issues ranging from segregation and racism to poverty and social class, while also giving voice to her more fanciful side. Taylor often created surreal scenes featuring giant animals that outsize humans and placed disembodied hands surrounding oblivious individuals. It has been theorized that much of her iconography was inspired by Vodun cosmology and spirits, but her images were also of her own making and emblematic of a private and very thoughtful spiritual belief.
This exhibition is a collaboration between SHRINE and Hedges Projects (LA). 10% of all proceeds from this show will be donated to For Freedoms, a nonprofit organization and platform for greater participation in the arts and in civil society, which produces exhibitions, installations, public programs, and billboard campaigns to advocate for inclusive civic participation.
photo: Ted Degener, ca 1990s