{"id":486,"date":"2008-01-25T14:47:50","date_gmt":"2008-01-25T19:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/the-bomb\/2008\/01\/25\/taylor-mckimensholiday-greeting\/"},"modified":"2008-01-25T16:07:10","modified_gmt":"2008-01-25T21:07:10","slug":"taylor-mckimensdesert-boy-meets-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/the-bomb\/2008\/01\/25\/taylor-mckimensdesert-boy-meets-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"~TAYLOR McKIMENS\/DESERT BOY MEETS SNOW !!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-content\/photos\/hTaylor_McKimens_holiday200.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"345\" alt=\"Taylor holiday 2007\" class=\"centered\" \/><br \/>\nHAPPY HOLIDAYS 2007 &#8211; ARTWORK BY TAYOR McKIMENS\/IMAGE COURTESY: TAYLOR McKIMENS<\/p>\n<p>THIS IS THE HOLIDAY GREETING TAYOR McKIMENS SENT OUT THIS SEASON. GUESS IT RATED AS THE BEST HOLIDAY GREETING &#8211; FROM AN ARTIST &#8211; 2007 !!<\/p>\n<p>didn&#8217;t post it immediately cause we were waiting on some info from TAYLOR &#8211; that never came in &#8211; like:  <em>where the hell was he<\/em> &#038; what did all this mean ? <\/p>\n<p>we had heard some buzz on the street that Taylor had left, his Brooklyn haunts (temporarily ? permanently ? &#8211; or at least for now ?) to hang out in LONDON, ONTARIO &#8211; with his pals &#8211; the COMMUNITY OUTREACH (Gallery) crew, in LONDON, ONTARIO, CANADA &#8211; but no one would  confirm anything for publication &#8211; Taylor made like someone with real Native American ghosts in his bloodstream &#8211; (we&#8217;ve heard rumors to that effect) &#8211;  and left his visual smoke signals to stand as his only communication. the sign on the porch &#8211; does say: &#8220;THREE BEDROOM FOR RENT &#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>and, upon on seeing his new painting coming out of his GALLERI LOYAL show, opening this week in STOCKHOLM &#8211; and factoring in the cryptic title: &#8220;SWEET DREAMS OF PHOENIX&#8221; &#8211; we think its a safe bet to say TAYLOR <em>must<\/em> be spending <em>some<\/em> time up in CANADA &#8211; cause there sure ain&#8217;t any snow around here !! not even in BROOKLYN.<\/p>\n<p>But, there&#8217;s tons of snow up in Canada &#8211; don&#8217;t ask how we know &#8211; trust me, we just do !!<br \/>\nand it looks to be having a great visual impact on Taylor &#8211; who was sprung to life &#8211;  under the great  American South West desert sun &#8211;  being born in 1976 &#8211; and raised in the small, totally art forsaken desert town of WINTERHAVEN, ARIZONA, near the Mexican border.<br \/>\nHe once told us the only art he ever saw, or even knew of &#8211;  growing up, was MAD MAGAZINE, assorted comic books and the GARBAGE PAIL KIDS &#8211; !!<\/p>\n<p>One of the things that freaked Taylor out, when he moved to New York &#8211; was all the exposure the local kids get here &#8211; to all kinds of art &#8211; street art, graphic art, exhibition banners of all kinds floating from museum buildings;  they really just take it for granted how art bombards them, and how much they really know about art &#8211; if they stopped to think about it. &#8211;  and, we&#8217;re not just talking about the ones who get trucked around from DAY ONE &#8211;  in their new-born baby pouches, and then strollers &#8211; to museums  and gallery openings. Though I remember Taylor being especially in awe of that class of NYC kid art-know-it-all.<br \/>\nHe says <em>all<\/em> he saw growing up &#8211;  were cactuses and broken down pick-up trucks. He thought comic books were the beginning &#8211;  and end all &#8211;  of visual  civilization. Later in his teens, in high school &#8211; he thought modern art ended with ANDY WARHOL &#8211; cause that&#8217;s where any of the old art books he could scare up &#8211; ended ! <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a bit of long story &#8211; he entered a commercial &#8211; &#8216;can you draw &#8211; we can help you&#8217; &#8211; type school &#8211; where an inspired instructor luckily saw his talent &#8211; and turned him onto the real art world and told him &#8211;  to go !!  After graduating from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California &#8211;  Taylor hooked up with a young independent curator and artist,  RICH JACOBS.  Rich Jacobs is pretty well known here in New York, for his brilliant group shows at various venues, (he did that great &#8216;BALL POINT PEN DRAWING SHOW at CINDERS a year or so, back, and one at FUSE , too) &#8211; in the past several years. Though sadly, we have heard that Rich Jacobs recently moved back west. At any rate, back in the day &#8211; RICH JACOBS gave Taylor his first break &#8211; like he did so many others &#8211; by including his work in the &#8216;MOVE&#8217; series of shows he was then curating  at New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles, and which led New Image Art &#8211; to give Taylor his first solo show in 2001. the rest is history &#8211; <em>or will be<\/em>.<br \/>\nNot sure when Taylor actually moved to New York, but he was included in the Year 2000 exhibit: &#8216;MOVE FOUR&#8217;, RICH JACOBS curated at P.S. 122, in New York. There&#8217;s a bio for Taylor on the Gallerie Loyal <a href=\"http:\/\/galleriloyal.com\/bio_taylor_mckimens.html\">website<\/a> &#8211; but it just basically lists his shows. It does say he: Lives and Works in New York &#8211;  so I guess &#8211; this stay in Canada &#8211; is just as if he went upstate &#8211; (like JACKSON POLLOCK went to the {remote} Hamptons w-a-y back in <em>that<\/em> day), except Taylor had to go a just little bit further north (in this day) &#8211; to find some solace and a change in scene.<\/p>\n<p>so, cactus boy &#8211; meets snow &#8211; that funny cold white stuff that (still) falls copiously in Canada &#8211; isn&#8217;t it great &#8211; how there is always something new to marvel at, and paint about &#8211; in this crazy, one could say, self-destroying &#8211;  world of ours !! Good luck with your show, and opening tonight, wish we could be there to see it &#8211; from all of your your friends back here, in NYC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HAPPY HOLIDAYS 2007 &#8211; ARTWORK BY TAYOR McKIMENS\/IMAGE COURTESY: TAYLOR McKIMENS THIS IS THE HOLIDAY GREETING TAYOR McKIMENS SENT OUT THIS SEASON. GUESS IT RATED AS THE BEST HOLIDAY GREETING &#8211; FROM AN ARTIST &#8211; 2007 !! didn&#8217;t post it immediately cause we were waiting on some info from TAYLOR &#8211; that never came in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artloversnewyork.com\/zine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}