Taylor looks to show U in ‘all its capacities’

Employing the techniques of theatre, whereby actors create backstory for their characters, artist Cecilia Taylor made up a story before she set to work on her letter U. She was selected to be one of the 26 artists to take part in the Alphabet Project, a special initiative of the Prince George Citizen to celebrate the newspaper’s 100th anniversary. The Community Arts Council was the Citizen’s full partner in the process.

With newspapers on the mind, Taylor kept circling her thoughts to the phrase “wise words” and that, with local nature in mind, took her to the image of an owl. A fable sparked through the mental wires of her brain. The story she mentally told herself was of an owl who saw other birds come to rest on telephone lines. Knowing that true wisdom came from testing theories and gathering experiences, the owl decided to try this for itself. But when the owl settled onto the utility line, its weight caused the cable to sag. The effect was so profound on the owl that it created the letter U in its wake, and that’s why, according to Taylor’s imaginings, even today, the owl’s call sounds so much like uu-uuuuuuu and few owls are ever spotted on power lines.

The other part of Taylor’s original piece for the Alphabet Project is a collage featuring bold faced references to the letter U that she clipped from books.

“All of them come from books I bought or found discarded,” she said. “It’s another way to show the letter U for what it does, and it’s another way to talk about the printed word, which is what a newspaper does. I went to a lot of trouble to find all these clippings. You’ll see that there are many languages in the clippings – French, Vietnamese, Spanish, English of course – because I wanted to represent the letter U in all its capacities. I’m a lover of books; a word nut. The written word is what drew me in when I heard that the Citizen was doing this project. I wanted to showcase my art, so I applied, but it was the shock of the cen- tury when I got the acceptance letter.”

Taylor has been a lifelong artist, starting as a small child.

“The best gift I ever got was the big Crayola pack with the built-in crayon sharpener,” she said. “My grandpa was a magazine illustrator. Apparently he did some work for GQ but it was so long ago there’s no record of it. But art was always around. Many of my relatives were involved in art. It was a very art-orientated family.”

But it got put on ever-receding back burners as her life’s circumstances unfolded. Jobs, family and general life brought other priorities to her foreground. But her children grew up. Her marriage unbuckled. Her time became more amenable to the artistic cravings she had been feeling for decades.

She rebooted her art pursuits by doing some simple sketches. The old skills came back quickly. People noticed. She was offered the chance to do one, then two, then more commercial chalkboard illustrations for local businesses. Her feedback was strongly positive and her personal enjoyment was floating like a bird on a stiff breeze.

The next step in her ambitions was to enter a few works in the 6x6 Art Auction, the Community Arts Council’s fundraiser event held each year. This is where pieces of art no bigger than a half-foot square are put up for sale.

“I sold two of my pieces there, and that felt really good, but it was who I sold them to that made me so excited,” she said. Community Arts Council coordinator Lisa Redpath was one of the purchasers and acclaimed local artist Janice Parker was the other. “I was so flattered. It was beyond exciting. It really lit my fires to do more art, just for art’s sake, not to make any money. I just knew I loved to do it.”

She still didn’t think she was ready to be included in a call for submissions from the breadth of the local arts community. Knowing the visual arts were strong in this area, she didn’t hit the “send” button on her online application to the Alphabet Project until 15 minutes before the deadline.

“They wanted to have a portfolio of your work and they wanted your CV, your curriculum vitae, but I didn’t have a CV,” she said. “I sat down and made one the best I could, but I didn’t honestly think I had a chance to be one of the 26 they would choose for this. I just figured what the hey, it would probably be a good idea to have a CV anyway, so why not do that, and if you’re going to go to the trouble of creating one, then why not submit it for consideration? But I kind of waffled on all of it.”

She coaxed the image out of primarily watercolour pencils with a bit of pen included.

“It’s like snowflakes with watercolour pencils,” she said. “No two are ever the same. The amount of water, the pressure you apply, the surface you’re working on, everything affects how the colours are going to turn out. Even the colour tone of the pencils can vary from one to another.”

Now that she has been earning some sustained positive affirmation for her artwork, she is considering taking the next step into trying out watercolour painting with a brush, or using acrylics to paint with.

She is a fan of fellow Alphabet Project alum Cliff Mann, a watercolour star painter. She joked that Mann and Parker both have their painting and teaching spaces side by side at Studio 2880 so she could learn from them both at the same time if she just sat on a swivel chair positioned between them.

For now, though, Taylor is headquartered where so many artists of all levels are: at the kitchen table. If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for U.