Artist Steed Taylor's media of choice are road paint and blood. However, his road design leading to the Nasher Museum of Art is composed of white paint.
The 100-foot-long design features Taylor's skills in road tattooing. recess' Christine Schellack sat down with Taylor, who lives in New York City, after he spent a day relaxing on the Nasher lawn.
recess: So, are you actually from North Carolina?
Steed Taylor: Yes! I was born in Cumberland County.
r: And what exactly is behind the idea of road tattoos? Perhaps you could explain why North Carolina is in need of body art.
ST: Well, this is the first piece I've done in North Carolina. I look at roads as being the skin of a community. People mark their skin to commemorate or memorialize something. The idea of tattooing a road is the same idea. I specifically created this one for the Nasher and it represents indigenous flora and people from North Carolina.
r: Very cool.
ST: Designs and names are painted into the larger design and then painted over. In this case, I said a Cherokee prayer [over] the piece once it was finished--the Cherokee would have been the native people in this area.
r:A lot of your past work has been for the means of commemorating pain. Why is this?
ST: I mean, there are many hardships in this world. Honoring people with AIDS in a specific community is something I've done work with. There's one wonderful piece for a woman who died of breast cancer. It was put on the road in front of the house of her best friend who had adopted her children.
r: But the paint medium that you use is purposely made so that it wears away with time. How is this appropriate when you're creating a memorial?
ST: Yeah, the designs are ultimately temporary. They usually wear away in a couple years. Time passes and pain passes. I feel that there's a need to memorialize something and it is time specific. September 11 is important to memorialize now, but how important will it be in 20 years? 100 years? Maybe what's really needed is something right now that doesn't last forever. People need to process pain and let it pass.
r: Anything you would want Duke students to know about your piece?
ST: Tell all the folks out there to drive on it. It's meant to have that done to it. Turn on down here toward the Nasher, pull a U-turn, and come back over it again. That's what it's all about.
r: I'm sure students will take that to heart. On a closing note, do you have a favorite piece of yours from across the years? Anything you'd like to share with us?
ST: Yeah. I did a design for the first forty kids born [in the maternity ward] in Hartford, Connecticut on my 40th birthday. The clock was ticking, but we got all the names painted. It was super sweet.
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