Taylor Smith

Your practice bridges photography, screen printing, painting, and collage. What usually sparks a new piece—the material you find, an image from art history, or a social observation?

Most often, the spark comes from the material itself. I’m drawn to objects that carry memory—like floppy disks, scraps of packaging, or images on the verge of being forgotten. These fragments already hold stories, and painting allows me to weave them together with cultural icons and art historical references. My time in Germany studying artists like Polke and Richter taught me to blur the lines between photography, screen printing, and painting. Ultimately, I see each work as a way to reflect on how memory, history, and cultural observation intersect.

Taylor Smith | 1954 Mercedes Benz

You speak about “reimagined life within everyday things.” What does the “redemption” of obsolete technology mean to you?

For me, redemption is about giving forgotten or obsolete technology a second life—one that resists erasure. A floppy disk, for example, once carried someone’s work, their data, their memories, and then, almost overnight, it became worthless, destined for a landfill. By pulling these objects into my paintings, I rescue them from disappearance and let them continue telling stories in a new way.

I never open the disks to see what was inside; the mystery of that abandoned information feels important. It’s an unintended collaboration with anonymous people from decades ago, and it reminds me that memory—whether personal or cultural—is fragile but still worth preserving.

The act of redemption is also ecological. These materials don’t decompose, and left behind, they break down into harmful microplastics. So, in reimagining them through art, I’m not only reflecting on memory and history but also insisting that what we discard still matters. In a sense, the work redeems both the material and, symbolically, the idea of memory itself.

Taylor Smith | Abraham Lincoln

Why floppy disks? How do you source, sort, and curate their labels, and what role do original inscriptions play in a piece?

Floppy disks fascinate me because they sit at the intersection of memory, obsolescence, and technology. They were once cutting-edge, holding people’s work, photographs, and even fragments of personal lives—and now they’re essentially useless. I’m drawn to that tension: the fragility of memory preserved on a medium that the world has already abandoned.

I source them from many places—collectors, thrift shops, donations, and sometimes entire boxes found in storage clean-outs. Each disk carries traces of a past life, whether it’s a blank surface or a handwritten label. I don’t open them to see what’s inside; I prefer to preserve the mystery, letting the physicality of the object itself speak. The handwriting, the smudges, or even the way someone cataloged their data becomes a kind of portrait of an unknown person.

When I’m building a piece, I pay attention to the rhythm and pattern of the disks, sometimes highlighting labels and inscriptions, sometimes obscuring them in layers of paint. They create both texture and narrative—fragments of anonymous stories embedded in the work. For me, those inscriptions are a reminder of how personal technology once was, how data lived in our hands rather than the cloud, and how memory itself can be both intimate and ephemeral.

Taylor Smith | Celestial Freestyle

Do you ever recover or read data from the disks before using them? If so, has anything you found shaped a work?

No—I never recover or read the data on the disks. From the very beginning, it’s been important to me to leave them sealed, to respect the privacy of whoever once used them. The allure lies in the mystery: knowing that each disk once carried something personal—work, photographs, fragments of someone’s life—but choosing not to unlock it.

For me, the power is in imagining what might be there without ever intruding. The labels, handwriting, and physical traces already reveal enough to spark curiosity. By leaving the data untouched, I allow the disks to function as relics of memory—closed containers of the past that now take on new meaning in a painting. That locked, unknowable quality is part of what makes the work resonate: it reminds us how much of history and memory is forever out of reach.

Appropriation is central to pop art. Where do you draw the ethical and legal lines when recontextualizing brands and iconic portraits?

Appropriation has always been central to pop art, and I see myself working in that lineage. My intention is never to replicate or sell a product but to transform cultural icons, brands, and visual relics into something entirely new. These symbols already live in our collective memory—whether it’s a Hollywood face, a fashion logo, or a fragment of advertising—and my work reimagines them in the context of painting, memory, and contemporary culture.

I don’t concern myself with the strict legal or commercial boundaries, because I’m not making handbags or neckties for the department store. I’m making singular works of art that reinterpret imagery we already share as a society. In my paintings, appropriation isn’t about reproduction—it’s about transformation. I filter these symbols through layers of collage, paint, and found material, so that they carry the weight of both nostalgia and critique.

For me, the ethical line is about intention. I’m not exploiting these icons but rather reflecting on how they’ve shaped our ideas of aspiration, memory, and the so-called “American Dream.” In this politically and ideologically divided world, my work offers nostalgic reflections on those shared cultural roots, even as it questions how fragile and fractured they’ve become.

Taylor Smith | Float Like A Butterfly

Your mother’s Warhol story and assisting on Keith Haring’s Berlin Wall mural are formative moments. What did each teach you that still guides your studio today?

Warhol’s story, told through my mother, taught me the courage of vision—how something ordinary could be transformed into culture-changing art. Assisting Keith Haring on the Berlin Wall mural in the 80s showed me the urgency of art in public space, its ability to speak directly to freedom and history. Both lessons still drive my work: to take risks with materials and imagery, and to create art that resonates beyond the studio.

Many works have a candy-colored surface with darker subtexts (consumption, waste, mortality). How do you engineer that tension?

I use bright, candy-colored surfaces to echo the glossy allure of consumer culture, but beneath them I layer themes of waste, memory, and mortality. The tension comes from that contrast—the seductive polish on the outside and the fragility or darkness within. In a way, the paintings act like packaging: shiny and attractive, but concealing something more complex inside.

Taylor Smith | Grizzly Bear

How did living in Germany shape your sensibility—design, typography, post-Wall Berlin culture?

Living in Germany shaped me in countless ways, both visually and conceptually. I studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and was immersed in a culture where design, typography, and visual clarity are deeply valued. That sense of precision and boldness in graphic language still informs my work today, even when I’m layering paint or collage.

Berlin in the years after the Wall came down was especially formative. It was a city in transition—raw, experimental, full of artists who were questioning history while inventing new futures. That atmosphere gave me permission to take risks, to collapse boundaries between mediums, and to think of art as something that could exist just as powerfully in the street as in the gallery.

Being surrounded by the work of German artists like Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter also shaped my sensibility. Their ways of reinterpreting photography, printmaking, and painting gave me a framework for blurring those same lines in my own practice. Ultimately, Germany taught me to see memory, history, and culture as layered surfaces—always shifting, always open to reinvention.