Monday, October 19, 2020 @ 5:30, Zoom link, click here

At the age of 7, Camilla Taylor moved to the conservative town of Provo, UT from Northern California. Her parents were guided by what they felt were the words of God.

As observant LDS (Mormons), they attended church, avoided swearing and coffee, and homeschooled. Camilla Taylor wrote fluently in Deseret, the alphabet invented by the early Mormon Church. Her parents split, and her mother went on to form her own small, cult-like religion. As both faiths stressed the imminent end of the world, her family prepared for the fall of society by learning self-reliant skills such as grinding their own flour to make bread.

In high school, an art teacher introduced Camilla Taylor to printmaking on a creaky old press, and, while on a Senior Year trip to Los Angeles to see the touring Van Goghs at The Getty. The Van Goghs left her cold, but seeing Central Meridian by Michael C. McMillen at LACMA (a sort of hoarder’s garage as sculpture) made her fall in love with the possibilities of art.

Camilla Taylor attended the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, pursuing a BFA in Fine Arts with an emphasis in printmaking, funding her studies with jobs that varied from barista to manufacturing of bondage gear. Upon completion of her degree, she lost access to the expensive, printmaking equipment she had come to rely upon which led to her transition to sculpture, experimenting with fabric and clay, occasionally making mistakes like a time when her artwork ended up being consumed by flour beetles.
Camilla Taylor received her MFA at California State University at Long Beach in 2011.