Sublimate:
the tarot cards, the artist trading cards
Sarah Ellen Taylor
Marylhurst University Art Gym 17600 Pacific Highway, 636-8141
Ends Dec. 15
Forget Pokémon.
Even as pocket-monster fanaticism seizes every little one
in America, Portland printmaker Sarah Ellen Taylor has gone
one better. Taylor has created cards for adults not likely
to track the exploits of Pikachu and Venomoth. The next
big collectible for the tony, brainy and compulsively acquisitive?
Regional artist trading cards.
Taylor's cards bring together the work of some of Portland's
brashest avant-gardists and the pop appeal of Topps trading
packs. Maybe the gold-foil Kristy Edmunds won't be quite
as coveted as a rookie-year Johnny Bench, but Taylor's cards
are great fun nonetheless. Looking to churn out accessible
art that people can trade and use as a reference, she's
hit a home run.
Along with the trading cards, there are several other smaller,
quite elegant Taylor projects on display at the Marylhurst
Art Gym. There is a generous aspect to all of her work.
In Taylor's words, "Basically, you can do anything you want
to anything I do."
The 10 decks of trading cards each gather artists from
a different medium. There is a deck of book artists, one
of painters, one of sculptors and so on. Each deck includes
eight cards. A limited number of rare gold-foil "chaser
cards," with the artist's name letter-pressed in gold foil,
mix in. Each pack also contains a sticker and a piece of
gum, of course.
Willamette Week recently talked with Taylor at a
downtown coffeeshop about her work.
WW: How did you go about soliciting artists
for the cards?
Taylor: I put out a ton of calls for artists this year,
and I got so little response. I was a bit disappointed because
I wanted to get people that were working outside of the
gallery system. So, if people responded, there's at least
one solicited response in each deck. I didn't want to be
prejudiced to just what I knew. I ended up having to rely
on galleries a lot because they have slides so readily available.
I'd take about 200 slides home. After I narrowed it down,
I would call the artists and say, 'Here's the project, would
you please let me put you on a card?'
Did anyone refuse?
I did have, I think, three people refuse out of all the
decks. Most often it was because they were uncomfortable
with the celebrity aspect of it. One person who had said
yes initially found out how small the cards were going to
be and pulled out because they worried about the size of
reproduction.
Who is the intended audience for this?
I would love for them to be more than for just insiders,
although the more I try to get artists who are not in galleries,
and try to get the cards out, the more I realize how difficult
it is to reach people other than artists and arts professionals.
But I keep trying. The fact that they're like baseball cards
makes it easier to get people's attention. I was really
inspired by Swallow Press's billboards and how those were
just out--whether or not people knew they were intended
to be art. They were effective.
I wonder, if they were less expensive and wrapped in
baseball-card wrappings, would they feel less precious?
I've been putting them up in spaces where maybe you don't
expect to see them. So that helps, but I need to work on
that part a little more.
You said you treat each deck like a show. Could you
explain that?
It's like curating. For instance, the sculpture deck is
called Visceral, and all the artists use skin or
gut or genitalia in their work, so I see all eight cards
as going together. Even if it's not being reproduced for
a specific word, or a specific theme, I get to pick what's
reproduced on the front.
If these are intended for trading, are there doubles?
Or is it the same eight for each pack?
That was my biggest mistake. If I could do it again, I
would print eight cards per deck and you would get seven.
Or there would be 10 cards per deck and you would get eight.
So there would be more of an incentive to trade.
Could you explain the "paints: right, sculpts: left"
on the bottom of the card? For instance, this Susan Harlan
card says "paints and books: ambidextrous."
Each artist tells me the two media that are most important
to them. They're modeled after baseball cards, you know--bats:
right, pitches: left. But they also contain information.
The first one is their primary medium or what hand they
use most often to do the work they do. Brian Borrello chose
his two media to be sex and death. I said, 'That's fine.
That covers pretty much everything!'
The first series is Proxemics, and it contains
PICA's Kristy Edmunds and painter Brian Friedman among others.
What is that deck about?
That first deck was for a show that Randy Gragg curated
about landscape. I wanted to do something besides the Tarot
cards, which is really all that had been seen [of mine]
in public. So Proxemics is about culture and architecture
or how culture and space are dependent on each other. For
me, Proxemics is all those people because of their
influence on me and how I work.
So will there be other sets, another set of sculptors
after Viscera? Will you keep expanding?
The first deck that Brian [Friedman] is in is almost gone.
There's only a handful of decks left. I haven't decided
whether it just goes away or if I redo the deck with updated
images and information--so there would be two Brian Friedman
cards, you know, like season one and season two. Which would
be more like trading cards.
What about these gold-foil "chase cards"? Do you know
how many there are?
There's about 10 percent of the cards that leave my studio
that could have one in it. And I notice you didn't get one.
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Willamette Week | originally
published December 1,
1999
|
