Episode 001 - Ashley Taylor

In this episode, I welcome my first guest, Ashley Taylor! Ashley hails from New York City, and shares her story about a time when she realized that art has the power to rewrite and redeem narratives.  

Links to get in touch with Ashley Taylor: https://www.facebook.com/ashleytaylorcreative/ | https://ashleytaylordance.wixsite.com/ashleytaylordance

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Artfully Told links: www.facebook.com/artfullytold | elevateartskc@gmail.com

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SHOW NOTES:

Episode 001 - Ashley Taylor

Lindsey Dinneen: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Artfully Told, where we share true stories about meaningful encounters with art.

[00:00:06] Krista: [00:00:06] "I think artists help people have different perspectives on every aspect of life."

[00:00:12]Roman: [00:00:12] "All I can do is put my heart in to the world.""

[00:00:15] Elizabeth: [00:00:15] "It doesn't have to be perfect the first time. It doesn't have to be perfect ever, really. I mean, as long as you, you're enjoying doing it and you're trying your best, that can be good enough.

[00:00:23] Elna: [00:00:23] "Art is something that you can experience with your senses and that you just experience as so beautiful."

[00:00:31] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:00:31] Hello and welcome to Artfully Told. I am Lindsey and today I'm super delighted that my guest is actually my very own sister. She's coming to us live from New York city, which is super cool, and her name is Ashley Taylor. Ashley, thank you so much for joining us.

[00:00:50] Ashley Taylor: [00:00:50] Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.

[00:00:52] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:00:52] Awesome. Well, could you start by just sharing a little bit about your background and  your art interests.

[00:00:58] Ashley Taylor: [00:00:58] Sure. So as mentioned, I currently live in New York City with my husband and my son and I have been interested in all forms of art for as long as I can remember going back to being a kid and drawing fun in my sketchpad. And I've been dabbling in different forms of art ever since I have been a dancer since I was four years old and continuing to do that on a professional level in different freelance projects right now. And I also am a choreographer and I love writing. That's probably my favorite way to express myself and process things is through writing. So I'm trying to get into that more and working on a few different projects at the moment.  Other than that I enjoy different crafts and, going to art museums and just appreciating art in all of its forms.

[00:01:51] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:01:51] Wonderful. Yes, you are quite the well-rounded artist, I would say. Awesome. And I know you have some stories to share or a little bit about a meaningful encounter with art, so I'd love if you would share a little bit with us.

[00:02:06] Ashley Taylor: [00:02:06] Yeah. So. It's hard to narrow down one meaningful encounter with art because I've had so many. But the one that came to mind first was actually watching a film called "Saving Mr. Banks," which is the story of the making of the "Mary Poppins" movie. And it's kind of about how Walt Disney convinced P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, to let him make an adaptation of her story. And she resisted for a long time. And when she finally gave in, she was extremely particular about how the story was told on film. And one of the things that she kept harping on was that the character of the father in the story, Mr. Banks, needed to be a kind character with a redemptive arc in his story. And this was extremely important to her. And as we watch the film, we understand that the reason for that is because her own father, while he was a good dad to her and helped develop her imagination, and she loved him and admired him, he was an alcoholic and did not have a happy ending.

[00:03:21]And, he really let the family down because his own demons that he was dealing with. And so we understand that what she did through the Mary Poppins story was tried to redeem her own father in the art that she made. And to me, that concept was just absolutely fascinating and profound because I realized that through the art we make, we choose how we remember someone or how we look at a situation in retrospect that has happened to us. And you know, a lot of us think that stories or art come out of our heads and are just completely fictitious or maybe loosely based on events, but not necessarily a true depiction of what happened-- and that's true. But to me, just the idea that art is a way we can process things that have happened to us in a healthy way and even rewrite the ending to what we wished it had been is such a powerful concept to me. So that really stuck with me, to the ability to just reframe the narrative of life through what we make.

[00:04:32]Lindsey Dinneen: [00:04:32] Oh, I like that. Reframe the narrative. Yeah, that's incredibly powerful. And do you feel like you have had an experience like that, just an experience with something that you've translated into art and then had a different frame? Like you've reframed it yourself?

[00:04:49] Ashley Taylor: [00:04:49] Yeah, I think there are. So I'm going to answer that generally and specifically.  Generally speaking, I am a huge believer that there's always a silver lining of some kind in every situation, and oftentimes it's very difficult to see it and you might not see it until years later when you look back and realize how an experience shaped you for better or for worse, and it's valid.

[00:05:17] If it was for worse, that's still good to know. That's a valuable thing to be able to say. That that was bad and that changed me for the worst. I mean, we need to acknowledge that too. Anyway, so to be able to see the good in a situation, or at least the value in a situation--let me say that.

[00:05:37] So the value in a situation that we go through that's rough, I think, is an incredible gift, and really a vital skill because if we look back on things and only see the negative about them or how hard it was or how unfair it was, we're just going to become bitter and resentful and have a very dark outlook on life.

[00:05:58]And similarly in art, I mean, a lot of people make art that is very realistic perhaps, but it's dark and gritty and there are no happy endings. And, and you know, that is true there. There are aspects of truth in art that is dark and does not have a redemptive arc because not all of real life stories have an obvious good aspect to them.

[00:06:24]However, I do believe that good comes out of every situation. I think that is something that God has the ability to turn any situation around, or to bring learning or some kind of beauty out of it. So all that to say, generally speaking, I always try to have an element of hope in whatever I make.  If it's a dance, even if it's sort of an abstract one or if it's about a tough subject, or if it's a story that I'm writing, I always try to have some element of, okay, where is the light in the darkness? Where's the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak? Or maybe the tunnel doesn't end, but maybe there's something about being in it that shapes us for the better. Right?

[00:07:06]Lindsey Dinneen: [00:07:06] Yeah, I love that.

[00:07:07]Ashley Taylor: [00:07:07] I mean, there are cases where it's valid to make art that does not have a happy ending, but you realize how it changed you. So for example, right now I have this idea which has not come to fruition yet, but this idea about a song that inspired me, which is about a relationship that ended, and I was thinking, "How would I choreograph a dance to this song that had some element of hope or, or truth to it?"

[00:07:31] Not just, look, here's a relationship that ended. Now we're sad. I mean that in real life, we don't need that in art. Right? So I was thinking, what if in this, in this piece, it starts out with the guy is the one who's been abandoned and he's dancing out his disappointment about this.

[00:07:49]And in the end, she realizes what she did and regrets it, but it's too late because he moved on. And now that's not exactly hopeful except in the sense that she has now realized, "You know what? I made a mistake. This was my fault. It's too late with this particular relationship, but maybe in the future I will have learned from this and can change how I am acting as a person, in a future relationship," if that makes sense.

[00:08:17] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:08:17] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:08:19] Ashley Taylor: [00:08:19] Anyway, so that's just, that's just one example of something I was thinking about recently. But to answer your question, your original question for specifically, I'm sorry, I'm going off on a tangent here, but, I had a very intense job for, for several years and with a very complicated employer,  and I generally had a good relationship with this person, but, there were moments that were very dysfunctional. And I heard a lot of stories from other people about even worst encounters they'd had. And so I, I am again, remembering that I can choose how to remember this person. Most people that I know who were also in the same job, have only negative things to say.

[00:09:04]And that is a very valid response to some of the things that happened to them. However, for me, I can never look at the situation only negatively because I did grow and learn so much from, from the job, from my employer, and I feel like the fair thing to do for me to process this out would be to write about the bad things that are true.

[00:09:26]And also the good things that are true and what I got out of this situation, what I got out of my relationship with this person and that I can choose to remember her by, you know, for example, that time in the office when I told her, "I'm not sure if I can do this anymore," and how understanding and just sympathetic, kind, she was with me during that time.

[00:09:47]And that's something that maybe not everybody experienced with her, but I did. And so for me, I would rather remember her by that moment than by something else where it was a bad time for her, or we had a disagreement or something. I would rather say those things happened. I acknowledged they were bad and they were hard. But I can choose instead to, to look back on this person and say, you know, but I do remember that one time she was kind.

[00:10:13]Lindsey Dinneen: [00:10:13] Yeah. and there's a lot of power to that.

[00:10:15]Ashley Taylor: [00:10:15] Yeah, and freedom too. I mean, who wants to go through life constantly remembering only the bad things about your family or, or, you know, and we all have those, but, but in ours, I think it's just an amazing opportunity  to remember the good, and then choose to be changed by that.

[00:10:31] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:10:31] Hm. I like that. And I think it's exactly like what you were talking about where you could probably go crazy, or at least feel pretty depressed if you really chose to only remember the bad. So I think there's a lot of transformative power that you have in writing about this experience. And the other thing that really stood out to me was I liked the fact that you're going to be including both the good and the bad, but you talked about both things being true. And I think it's so important to place a lot of value on honesty. And if you're going to be honest on one side, the bad, then it's almost only fair to also be honest about the good.

[00:11:12] Ashley Taylor: [00:11:12] Right.

[00:11:12]Lindsey Dinneen: [00:11:12] Yeah. That's, that's awesome.

[00:11:15]Ashley Taylor: [00:11:15] Yeah. Cause I think it's easy to, when we were telling our story to somebody else, we're trying, we're all coming into it with a kind of, hoped for outcome. Right? So, if I tell you my story, I'm kind of trying to influence you to think about it the way that I thought about it, right? So I might leave out the parts that don't support my point right.

[00:11:34]Lindsey Dinneen: [00:11:34] Yeah!

[00:11:35] Ashley Taylor: [00:11:35] And I mean, in art, you have to do that, right? You do need to edit down to the representative moments that supports what you're talking about. However, it's also important to remember that no situation is black and white. Almost no situation is black and white. And there's many more layers to human relationships or human situations than what we can see or, Then, oh, this was a good person. This was a bad person like that. That's, that's very shallow-- not, not the way life is. Life is messy. We're all, we're all human. So, to have the chance to explore that in art and try to see the deeper meaning behind it is just a really cool opportunity, I think.

[00:12:19] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:12:19] Yeah. Yeah. I love that. It's great perspective too. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing that.  I just have a couple questions about art in general, if you don't mind me asking--how do you personally define art or what is art to you?

[00:12:37] Ashley Taylor: [00:12:37] Wow. Okay. What is art? To me, art is way for us to make sense of the world that we live in at its most basic level. I think we can do that a number of different ways. For one thing, sometimes when I think of art, I think of still life painting or landscape painting. That's like a very basic example of art. Or even going back to like the cave paintings, which is little stick animals, right? That's a way of humans who are saying, " Here's what I see. I'm going to try to copy it or represent it."

[00:13:13] And that's a very simple, almost primitive way of trying to make sense of the world of the world that we live in. So we can start there, or we can go all the way to very abstract paintings or dances or music, which sometimes are so abstract that the audience doesn't even understand what the inspiration was, but that is somebody trying to make sense of the world in their own way.

[00:13:37]I'm sure even trying to say, I can't make sense of the world--life is meaningless, so I'm going to make this hard to tell what it means art about it, right, that's still representing something. It's our way of trying to grapple with what we're seeing and experiencing. So that was a long winded answer. I hope that made sense.

[00:13:58] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:13:58] It was great. No, I, I'm putting you on the spot here. That was great. I love that. Okay. What do you think is the most important role of an artist?

[00:14:11]Ashley Taylor: [00:14:11] I wrote about this one time and I'm going to try to summarize what I said. I believe that the role of an artist is to observe. Observe and express. So observation is a very important part of, if you're the landscape painter, you have to spend a lot of time looking at the landscape that you're going to paint. And you have to observe the details in ways that you may not. Ordinarily, if you're just looking at this picture, but trying to put it down on paper, you have to consider all of this at great detail.

[00:14:43] And so a metaphor that I love is -- as an artist drawing or painting or doing something visual like this, you have to always ask, "Where are the shadows in what I'm drawing, where the shadow is falling." And that tells you:  "Where is the light and where's the light coming from to cast these shadows?"

[00:15:05] And so when I expand that into sort of a metaphor for what the artist is doing, I think, I think that's what we are supposed to be doing personally is like, okay, I'm looking at life or I'm looking at the situation. This is like exactly what I said earlier. Where are the shadows? Where are the dark things, the bad things?

[00:15:25]Right. But then if, if these are the shadows, okay, there's gotta be light coming from somewhere because shadows don't exist without light. I mean, if there was no light, you'd be looking at a blank black piece of paper. And we all know life is more than that . Anyway, so all that to say, I think the role of the artist is to say, "Where's the darkness, where are the shadows, where's the light? How do I represent both fairly?" And then let you draw your own conclusions. Like I can infuse my conclusions into what I make. But in the end, art is up for interpretation. It's usually subjective. And so, you may look at my story. And say, well, the darkness is way more important than the light there.

[00:16:13] The shadows, you know, outweigh the light in this. But somebody else might say, wow, look at the way the sun is shining.  So that's what I would say to be a careful observer of the world and to draw out where the good things are as well as the bad.

[00:16:31] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:16:31] I love that. That's awesome. Okay. I have one final question. Okay. So do you think that art--and the words I'm going to use for it are--I'll explain-- but do you think that art should be exclusive or inclusive? So as far as being exclusive, does that look like an artist who produces a piece of work and does not share the intentions behind it. So for example, going to a museum where you see a painting and perhaps it's a little more abstract and it's not clear necessarily what the artist was after.

[00:17:10] Ashley Taylor: [00:17:10] Right.

[00:17:10] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:17:10] Versus an inclusive approach of the artists always including people in their process as far as sharing the reasoning behind it or the inspiration, or how do you feel about all that?

[00:17:24] Ashley Taylor: [00:17:24] That's an interesting question. I would probably tend to fall somewhere in the middle of either extreme. So on the one hand, I think sometimes we can overexplain art. And say, for example, if I'm choreographing a dance, there's usually a reason behind at least some of my choices in how many people did I pick? What were the patterns? What was a gesture that appeared? Usually that has something to do with my theme, but if I sat there and explained all of that to you, it'd be a little overkill and kind of take out some of the fun of, of you, the audience trying to get that for yourself, right? It's like reading a book versus watching a movie.

[00:18:05] When you read a book, you have to use your imagination. I think we can fall into overexplaining. the other hand, if I, here's a great example. It was like when you see an abstract painting and you're like, okay, I don't really get anything out of this. I wonder what the title is. And then it's like untitled number seven.

[00:18:25]So that's going a little too far, right? At least give it a title--even if you won't explain anything else--at least give it a title. Maybe say, " Cloudless Day," or something where I can be like, okay, that's interesting. Now how do I see that in this painting or in this work?

[00:18:41]At least that gives me something to kind of go off of. So I would say if we can fall somewhere in the middle of being inclusive in the sense that we hint at least at what we're trying to say without necessarily spelling the whole thing out, because that takes some of the joy of it for the audience or the viewer.

[00:19:01] Because I think we've all had that moment where the title of a book, for example, suddenly becomes clear what it's talking about while you're reading the book. And it's like, yes, I get it, triumphant moment. And it makes you think about things in a deeper way and appreciate it more. And I wouldn't want to take that away from people.

[00:19:19]

[00:19:19] Lindsey Dinneen: [00:19:19] Yeah.

[00:19:21] Ashley Taylor: [00:19:21] Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:22]Lindsey Dinneen: [00:19:22] Well, thank you so very much for joining me today. That was awesome. I feel very inspired. Thanks so much for sharing with us and for creating art. I mean, I'm an artist and I'm biased, but I also do feel that art is really important for the world, and I just appreciate everyone who contributes, even if they're only contributing for themselves. But I just, I think there's a lot of value in that. So thank you on behalf of the world.

[00:19:55] Ashley Taylor: [00:19:55] No, absolutely. It's great to have an outlet to talk about it in, in this way, because I know there are a lot of likeminded people out there and, it's just nice to be able to discuss our thoughts about why art is important. So thanks for doing this. I appreciate it.

[00:20:13]Lindsey Dinneen: [00:20:13] My pleasure. Well, that is all for today. Thank you so much for joining us and we will catch you next time.

[00:20:24] If you have a story to share with us, we would love that so much and I hope your day has been Artfully Told.

[00:20:34] Hey, Artfully Told listeners, I'm excited to share with you a little bit about one of my very favorite resources for artists. It's a website called Arteza. They have incredible products, but what makes this company really unique is that they have supplies that are affordable to creators with every budget. So whether you're just starting out or dabbling or you, or you do have that budget available to you, they do have options for every budget level. They provide the tools, but you steer the way. Literally you can access hundreds of thousands of high quality unique products through their website, and right now they are offering a promo code to receive 8% off of any purchase and you can access the link and the promo code in my comments and show notes.

 

Intro & Outro Music Credits:

Bad Ideas (distressed) by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3412-bad-ideas-distressed-
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/