Naïve-artist & punk-sculptor discovers a passion for VR & cryptoart

VR Artist, Sculptor & Animator, Angie Taylor originally studied sculpture at art college in Scotland in the 1980s. She made wood-carvings, bronzes & steel constructions. Angie was, and still is, influenced heavily by the punk, fanzine culture that was the main vehicle of creativity for street artists at the time. 

After Leaving college, she became a prop-maker. Working in the film and TV industry. Angie was a punk in the 1970’s. She was a member of CND and supported Rock against Racism. she was also a founding member of Youth Against Tories in her home town in Scotland. She contributed political cartoons to fanzines such as FF magazine and deejayed in many of London’s gay clubs in her 20’s.

After being arrested as part of the Poll Tax riots in the early nineties, she moved back to Scotland to study animation. She then freelanced as a motion graphic designer for 25 years. Through this she became an expert in After Effects and other software applications. She wrote books on design and worked with Adobe as a demo artists in the 90’s before giving it all up to follow her art.

Through her work, and a fascination with technology, she became an expert in After Effects and other software applications. She wrote several books and video training titles on the subjects of mograph and animation. She was grabbed by Adobe, freelancing for them as a demo artist in the 1990’s, appearing at trade shows, conferences and other events.

In the early 2010’s Angie decided she wanted to get back to creating art as opposed to design. This is when she gave up her work and started teaching in order to fund her work as a sculptor. She enrolled on a wood carving course and set about follow her art.

Angie was awarded a life-changing artist’s residency in 2019 at Fusebox in Brighton. Here she learned about VR art software as well as game-engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine. Since then she has been immersed in immersive technology. Creating VR experiences that combine, digital sculpture & animation.

Angie was a punk in the 1970’s. Her work references the energy, anarchy and rebellion of the punk rock movement. She lived in Jamaica for a short time in 1981 before coming back to Scotland to attend art college. While bumming around on the beaches of Jamaica, she was taught wood-carving by a Jamaican Rastafarian. This experience, combined with her passion for punk rock, gives her work a naïve/tribal quality.

Angie is a huge fan of naïve art, rejecting conventional experience in representing real objects. She loves the art of Frank Bowling and Jean-Michel Basquiat. She also loves the cut-and-paste collage art of Linder Sterling, Jamie Reid and Hannah Höch. Other influences include Jacob Epstein, Robert Crumb and Tom of Finland. 

Her digital sculptures deliberately display the polygons they are made from. The slightly wonky, broken appearance echoes her feelings about herself and her feelings of not fitting in to society. Angie has ADHD and Aspergers. This means that her focus in intense but very short lived.

“I wanted to find a way to sketch out 3D sculptures in a quick, expressive, organic way. It’s as if the idea needs to be expressed before I get sidetracked and the idea loses validity. Once the form is there, I can then focus on it for days so spend that time experimenting with lighting, textures and treatments. I used to spend time refining the form  and shape. Till one day I realised that it’s roughness is what contains those feelings. Somehow by refining the form, they lose their power.”

Her digital sculptures deliberately display the polygons they are made from in the same way that primitive or naïve art often shows signs or marks from chisels or paint-strokes. Angie believes in capturing the feeling of the expression and presenting it in a perceived, raw state.

VR software provides Angie with a means of getting her ideas out quickly and powerfully. She then spends hours, days, experimenting with different treatments, lighting and rendering. Angie’s work is varied and doesn’t stay the same for long. Possibly due to her ADHD. As well as creating sculptures, she draws regularly and does more traditional 3D modelling as a practice. She also makes collage artworks and cartoon strips. Her style evolves quickly as she often adopts new technical techniques and at a whim.

Angie’s sculptures juxtapose the DIY, Punk ethic of fanzines, with the & fresh immediacy of Naïve art and the technical complexity of VR and 3D digital technology. The subjects of her sculptures often explore feelings of isolation, “not fitting in” and the challenges of living with ADHD and Aspergers.

The work also expresses a kinship with the natural world. Angie’s work often has elements of metamorphoses running through it with tree-people being a regular theme. Her early sculptures were of human-creature hybrids such as mermaids, sea creatures and man-eating plants. Angie has also focused much of her creative work on people who were persecuted during the witch trials in Scotland. She has a bronze sculpture on site in Irvine which commemorates the people you were persecuted as witches and lost their lives there as a result of just being different. 

Angie is now featuring her digital sculptures on Superrare. 

“I found out about crypto art via a friend of mine in Brighton. They showed me some of the work and I immediately loved the rawness, energy and democracy of the cryptoart  movement. It reminds me so much of the old punk movement where anyone could pick up and instrument or paintbrush and start creating. Before punk it was only huge record companies who could produce music and only massive graphic design houses who created design. Punk democratised it so that anyone could have a go. Cryptoart has a very similar energy. I love the variety of work being produced and the fact that it’s not being controlled by the traditional art world (yet). I hope it can stay this way but for now I just want to enjoy the energy and kinship of the movement.”

Website
www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter
@theAngieTaylor
Instagram
AngieTaylorArtist
Facebook
AngieTaylorArtist
Cryptoart  Shop
superrare.com/theangietaylor
CV
www.linkedin.com/in/theangietaylor/
Portfolio
angietaylor.co.uk/portfolio/
Artstation
www.artstation.com/angie_taylor
Behance
www.behance.net/angietaylor
Discord
AngieTaylor#0129
CryptoArt Galleries
superrare.com/theangietaylor
CryptoVoxels (Brighton Beach Sculpture Gallery)
https://www.cryptovoxels.com/parcels/3266