Origins

The cache of sensory input that each of us uses to form knowledge, is the basis of the language that is in turn used to communicate personal ideas.

Michael James Taylor is from Burlingame in California.  It was from here that his artistic practice evolved.  Michael’s father, Marvin ‘Buzz’ Taylor, introduced the practical and technical aspects of creating art work.  Most weekends of his childhood were spent welding steel, carving wood, forming materials into sculptural objects.  At the age of five, Michael learned why you don’t hold the hot end of a welded rod.  However, the encouragement to create objects was complemented with a thorough exposure to aesthetic beauty.  Michael’s father bought and sold antiques, jewellery, fine art, sculptures and decorative objects.  As a boy Michael was surrounded by precious objects and learned the language of artistic communication.  Michael’s parents bathed him in the knowledge of art galleries, museums, classical music and performance art. 

At university, Michael completed a science degree in Marine Biology while he studied senior Fine Art subjects that continued to stimulate his developing career.  He deferred his science subjects several times to pursue artistic interests.  Such as, the design and fabrication of a monumental steel sculpture that was selected for and exhibited in the San Francisco Arts Festival.  Studying marine biology added to Michael’s artistic vocabulary and he had considered the possibility of becoming a scientific illustrator.  The patterns and symmetries of invertebrate organisms were described in his two dimensional and three dimensional art works.  He participated in classes with Fletcher Benton and John Battenberg in the university foundry and through this gained extensive experience in bronze moulding and casting. 

Philip Martin, a family friend and owner of The Store originally commissioned Michael to make small wearable leather masks.  It was the late 1970’s and a nascent gay community adopted this art form as their own.  Because these masks had not developed through any established mask making tradition, they could fit into a community where “coming out” and concealment were powerful forces.

By the early 1980’s the masks had evolved into larger sculptural objects.  Participation in mask theme events, mask festivals and art fairs meant that the work was seen in a broader community.  The work eventually found its new orientation in New Orleans.  Masks have long been an essential part of the Mardi Gras tradition and a long and creative association had begun.

The work produced today is the outcome of a continuous exploration of the possibilities of the form and medium.  They have transformed into a purely sculptural inquiry about the expression of human qualities.  No longer wearable masks; they are essentially a sculpture with a mask at its centre, as a remnant of their unique history. 

For thirty years these extraordinary sculptural masks have been adored and acquired by private, corporate and museum collectors.