Alison Elizabeth Taylor has become well known for reinvigorating the Renaissance craft of marquetry, or intarsia wood inlay, a medium once made popular during the unprecedented age of luxury in Louis XIV's Court of Versailles. By choosing a medium that is typically associated with wealth and power to portray dystopian scenes of everyday life, Taylor creates a tension between the luxurious connotations of the material and a certain abjectness of the subject matter.

Born in Selma, Alabama and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, Taylor holds a BFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA and an MFA from Columbia University in New York. She is represented by James Cohan Gallery. Taylor's work has been included in exhibitions at National Academy Museum, New York, NY; Des Moines Art Center, IA; Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA; Puerto de Santander, Spain; and 96 Gillespie, London, England. She has been a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Art Papers, Art in America, ARTnews, Artforum, The New Yorker, Modern Painters and on NPR's Studio 360 among others. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.


March 15, 12:30 pm
Alfond Auditorium, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston



Image: Shotgun Hole with Additional Vandalism, 2010, wood veneer, shellac, oil paint