In this series, The Globe and Mail partners with award-winning platform Wondereur to explore the diversity of contemporary art from a completely new perspective. The Globe and Wondereur will approach radically different minds engaged in culture across the country and around the world. Each month, we will ask them to share with us the work of a contemporary Canadian artist who deeply touches them. This month, Globe Arts deputy editor Barry Hertz talks to fashion designer Tanya Taylor about her globetrotting childhood, Gustav Klimt and the work of her chosen contemporary artist, Jimmy Limit.
Was there art in your home while you grew up?
It was definitely informal, but yes. Both my parents had travelled for about 10 years before they had me, so they had so many textiles and pieces of art in the home from Sierra Leone, Thailand and India. They had a mix of textures and as a kid, I considered our home to be a very artful environment. I was allowed to paint on the walls. We had an art classroom, too, and I think that’s how I expressed myself. I was an only child and I found painting and paper mache something I did almost every weekend, a great form of expression. Surprisingly, there were not a lot of paintings on the wall – I think I made most of our things.
Do you remember any specific pieces from that art room?
Documenting the future of the art world, Wondereur is a ground-breaking cultural platform capturing the creative process of the most inspiring artists worldwide and providing exclusive access to their work. To learn more about Tanya Taylor's top pick in contemporary art, continue to Wondereur’s photo documentary on Jimmy Limit.
One of the first times I saw a 1960s kind of pinup drawing of women, I asked my mom whether or not I could create the entire basement into a 1960s-themed room. And I started drawing very large scale 6-foot tall women on all of the walls – it took me months – and I would go down, paint them, invite my friends over and it seemed a nice kind of committee board because everyone had a part in making it happen. Then we moved houses and my mom actually cut out the drywall. So we now have it where she lives now – these extremely heavy drawings of these women. I think that was the first time I realized that I could just think of something and express it through pure design. That was the first time it developed into the fabrics and illustration.
It sounds like the piece of movable drywall was a precursor to a Pinterest board.
That’s true. That’s when there wasn’t a digital way to organize your thoughts.
Did you visit many museums or galleries while growing up?
I remember going to the McMichael Gallery a lot in Kleinberg – and when I travelled as a kid, in Paris, in London. I’ve never been dedicated to one artist. I just liked to experiment myself with different mediums, and it became more of a hands on kind of exploratory thing at home. My dad was in Shanghai for years, and I’d go visit him and see kind of the fabrics, for example. There’s a lot of history to being able to immerse yourself in different places. I was always looking for kind of the depths of colour or the depths of texture, and that came from travelling to places that did have that quality and that kind of story behind the art.
Were there any of those stories that played a larger role in your design work today?
I was obsessed with Gustav Klimt as a kid, and I decorated my entire bathroom with every Klimt I could find. There was this kind of romance to it, and there’s a lot of texture and there was an interesting story behind him and who the women were. His kind of life really interested me.
How were you first introduced to Klimt?
I was in Vienna when I was about 11 or 12 when I saw his work for the first time. I felt like I was authentically connected to him, because I was in the country and there was a lot of his work in one place. Here in New York there’s a museum, an Austrian museum, that has a lot of pieces, so when I first moved here I would go to the cafe and go and at the museum and have my schnitzel and look at a lot of the different pieces.
How important is travel to your creative process?
Travel is the way that I can release my mind a little bit. Others can do it in various ways, but my favourite feeling is landing in a new city, and having 48 hours to explore and become immersed in what their culture looks like. That’s how I build my ideas. I went to Stockholm very last minute in the fall, just because I needed a burst of excitement. I found every museum that had the most colourful pieces that I could find, and hit all of them in 24 hours. It was exciting because I could then come back to New York and feel full with ideas. That’s the most personal way I can develop my thoughts.
Is there one place that you have yet to visit that’s on your must-do list?
I’ve never been to Berlin. I think I’ve been a lot of places when I was a kid that I’d like to revisit as an adult, too. Like Bali, for example. I went when I was 13. But I think it would be so exciting to go back as a 29 year old and see it in a completely different way. I’ve never been to India, actually, that would be my number one place. I think that would be very inspirational.
You studied finance in university, but it sounds like artistic pursuits have remained a constant ever since.
I studied finance because I love math and I love the idea of becoming an entrepreneur. Finance seemed like the easy, simple next step after high school. I enjoyed it, but within two years of being at McGill [University] I needed to find a way to express myself artistically, so I applied to Central Saint Martins [in London] and I went there for a summer. It was such a great experience because it was very hands on. One of the first classes I took, you wore a white body suit and expressed yourself by painting different colours on your body and interacting with the paper. That was obviously the complete opposite of Accounting 101. I realized that I needed a mix of both, so when I graduated from McGill, I went to the Parsons New School of Design in New York. I wanted to find a way to mix the entrepreneurship finance background, but integrated into what I really loved. I’m obviously extremely happy and lucky that I’ve ended up with a mixture of both.
Do you find that living in New York helps with developing the creative side of your work?
Every day. I got a new phone in January and at this point I think I have 16,000 photos on it. I take a picture of everything, and there’s a cafe right by my house that is the brightest green colour you could possibly think of. I pass that every morning and it’s this like spark of inspiration, and then you see people wearing clothes and walking around Soho in our office, so there’s just an abundant amount of inspiration at all times.
Tell me about Jimmy Limit, the artist you’ve selected for this series.
His focus on colour and shape and texture is something that immediately stands out at me. But I think when you look deeper, and obviously after reading a lot of the analysis of his pieces, there’s a sense of humour that comes from this reinterpretation of common objects. I think I see things the same way, in that when I start a season it usually starts around objects that I want to communicate in a surprising way. So, for example, last season in the fall I became obsessed with fishing oars, and these shiny sparkling kind of fish hooks. I interpreted that in a collection with these holographic prints, and blew out these shapes that felt aquatic. I feel like in his work, it’s like one of his first pieces with the tennis ball and the pottery vase [which appeared on the cover of cura magazine]. There’s something about taking two things that shouldn’t be together and finding this dynamic – it communicates something surprising to the viewer. I think that piece does a lot of commentary around the internal struggle of this tennis ball suffocating this ceramic piece that usually stuck empty: this interesting relationship that he’s creating between his pieces. His work feels familiar to people – it is reinterpreting something that is common in a new way. I think that’s the goal of each piece. He’s doing it on so many levels. He’s trying to stir a conversation, and he wants to bring up ideas, or bring up concepts that you wouldn’t normally attach to one of these objects. It’s an interesting connection to what I do because it’s not inherently feminine or romantic or optimistic, and that’s what my work is. But I like looking at someone who has such a different perspective and getting into their heads.
All while having a unique sense of fun and play.
He’s not taking himself too seriously. I think there was a story about how he went to the hardware store and bought a couple of pieces and took still photography and then returned the pieces and disrupted the life cycle of this tennis ball. To me, that’s just funny, first of all. But also, you’re almost playing mind tricks on yourself and the person looking at the piece. I think there’s a lot of thought involved.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
