In Essence, Everything’s art, Which Means Nothing is - An Interview with Syd Taylor
Creatives are practiced in doing a bit of everything. It takes discipline, time, habit, and of course, humor. Syd Taylor is the perfect package. In May, The Limelight's very own Stephanie Haro sat down with Asian-American artist Syd Taylor, whose specialties lie in satirical writing and distinct visual art. Read ahead to look through her unique lens of creating, get a sense of her down to earth energy, and learn about Syd’s book, Slipper Camp.
BY STEPHANIE HARO
You're multidisciplinary artists and you cover so many avenues, clothing, accessories, even furniture. What motivates you to create and put your work on something new and unexpected?
What motivates me? That is a very difficult question (to answer) without sounding like a douche. I'm someone who believes everyone is a creative. I'm okay with anyone calling themselves a creative, calling themselves an artist, even if it doesn't look like they're constantly making stuff. I happen to be someone that is constantly making stuff, and I hate to say it, it feels like a force beyond my control a lot of the time. Which I know sounds lame because a lot of people struggle with keeping up and doing things. For me, It's just something I have to do. I've done it ever since I was little. It's kind of my form of meditation, and I hate to be the type of person that sounds like things come easy to me, but I think that I tend to take life ‘on the chin’ or something like that, because I'm so grounded doing art.
I can't help it. I don't know. I don't know how to explain it. It's not like I'm pushing for ‘oh what new innovative way, can I do something unique or put a spin-on or something?’ They are genuinely just ideas that come to me and I get a million a day. The ones that I have the tools to do or even help with, which I'm always grateful for help to create stuff or build stuff, that's a factor in whether or not it actually gets produced.
My motivation is that I like doing it, so why wouldn't I do it?
Bouncing off that, how do you face off with burnout?
That's a good question because a lot of people do face burnout and I'm trying to think of if I've ever had a real version of that. And I would say no. The only version I have is that, if I get bored of working on one thing, I just move on to the next thing. I'm not a big proponent of finishing or not finishing. I have so many projects always happening simultaneously that if one gets stalled oreven if I give up on it, it doesn't really feel like anything because I don't feel attachment to my work. Like I'm interesting.
I feel like if someone had me take something of mine and made me rip it up and break it, I really wouldn’t care because I know there's always other things coming. I shouldn't hold on. Change exists. So, in the sense of burnout, I've never been in an instance where I've been stagnant where I haven't been creating. I guess the biggest feat would have been the book that I just put out because I've never written a book, and it was very hard. I wouldn't say I experienced burnout, but my version of this would be pushing forward to the next chapter. I kept re-reading and re-editing the same few chapters over and over again because I couldn't let go of it not being the way I wanted it. I didn't want to stop. You eventually have to move on if you want to finish it. You can't keep painting over the one spot over and over again, it doesn't make any sense.
Stephanie: (You sound so cool.)
I feel like people put the idea of being an artist on a pedestal, and I hate to talk badly about artists, because it's mostly artists, audience members, and consumers alike that treat it that way. I think it's lame. As much as I love you calling me cool, I'm a human, like of course that feeds my ego.
The reason I’m telling you ‘no, stop’ is because who cares that I make art? Like I know that this interview is about me making art, but genuinely, who cares? Creating is a human thing. Even if you look up what is art, it's humans creating something. So, whoever made this nail polish, (gestures to her hand) created it, whoever made the tools you use, created it. So in essence,everything's art, which means nothing, so it doesn't really matter. Yeah, it's cool, but like everyone does it, you know.
Just because it might look stereotypical, it doesn't make it any more important than every other art that there is, which is literally everything. The chairs we're sitting on, how we're communicating right now, like that's all included.
Let's shift avenues a bit. You've mentioned your book. Creative writing is its own avenue of art. What got you into writing in the first place?
A very specific personality trait of mine is comedy. It’s kind of my way to cope. There's no reason to take everything so seriously. Writing was one of my first real ways of coping, because you can't talk everyone's ear off.
It's easy for me to talk. When you're a kid, if you're a weirdo and you don't really have a lot of friends, but you have a lot to say, you're gonna write it down. I had pretty unconventional parents. They've always been super open-minded, but I wouldn't say neglectful. Maybe I’m just apathetic towards my life.
That was my way of coping. Truthfully, I spent a lot of time writing about them or writing about me. When you're an angsty kid, you're like making up all this stuff, like ‘I want to die’, or whatever you're writing. I wrote it in a funny way, like I'm an outsider looking at everything and seeing how ridiculous life is. In high school, I want to say I was 15. This is kind of random, but my homeroom teacher happened to be the head of our creative writing department and I think she broke me out of my shell. I didn’t really like her that much. She was kind of a cunt. She had me write all the time, so I ended up starting as a playwright first. So, I wrote a play and they directed and performed it at my high school. It was really dumb. It was like a parody of The Sound Of Music. And I was the kind of kid that didn't really like attention. Even though I could have just gone and been in the front, I went secretly and sat in the back. I just wanted to see it.
We'll circle back to Slipper Camp! Your art seems to tackle a lot of personal and world issues alike and you seem to approach things with a lot of humor (which you've mentioned.) Is there a particular message you want people to take away from you and your art
I sometimes get a yucky feeling when people consume my art for the sole purpose of thinking it's cool because they know that other people think it's cool, instead of it just being something to appreciate and look at. Your ego shouldn't be attached to it. You shouldn't be checking if other people like it. You shouldn't be liking it because you want me to like you. I hate to confess this. I don't want to ever shit on or not be grateful for people that do like my art, but sometimes it'sfunny when you see someone like something and you realize they don't like it for what it is. Anyone who's in on the joke is in on the joke. I remember one time I created like a piece with one of my characters in the center, and then written all over it said ‘Mabaho’ which is Tagalog for my butt smells. I want to say like 99% of people that bought that shirt wore it freely and did not ask me what it said, they just thought it was cool and they liked the character cause it was cute, trendy or fashionable. The joke of it was that you're all wearing a shirt that says your butt smells all over it, and you're not even wondering why! It was an experiment, and I was doing it, you know, for that reason. I don't want them to take it seriously, obviously, but I'd like people to like things for themselves and not because something is cool. I'm not gonna decide how people see my work. You have no choice in that matter.
Where did the spark for Slipper Camp come from and what was the moment you realized ‘I need to write this book’?
I don't think I had necessarily an idea for Slipper Camp. I was sick of what I was doing and I was like ‘I want to write a book’ so I just basically went through however many millions ofnotebooks and picked something that had a significant amount of pages like seven pages of something or a long stream of dialogue and I started with that. Then I just wrote around it until there was a story, not because I had an idea for it.
I wrote for fun like dialogue that sounded nice and once there was, I want to say 20 pages. That's when I was like, okay I can write a book with this. This is where my educational stuff came from. That's when I broke down and just wrote act one, act two, act three. I literally just made it up because it sounded cool. Funny how earlier I said ‘don't consume it if it's cool’ and I'm like I wrote it to be cool.
Do you have favorite authors or books that influence you?
I have work that I am inspired by! Kurt Vonnegut, obviously, is a pretty known satirical science fiction writer with Slaughterhouse-Five. I'm also thinking of Boots Riley. Have you ever seen Sorry To Bother You? It's really good. You should watch it. But that's a bit anti-capitalist, it gets really ridiculous and lives in the absurd and that's where my mind typically lives too. This isn't even a science fiction book or anything, it's actually creative non-fiction, there's this book called Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran. It's basically all the research and facts about factory farming and all of that and how people perceive animals and like why we call the animal a pig, but then we eat it and now it's pork. Like renaming things so that it's easier to digest, you know.
I wouldn't say I'm vegan, I would say I practice veganism. I don't think it's necessary for people to do that. I don't want to support that where we're just killing animals rapidly without any mindfulness to it, like mindfulness is very important for me. Then secondly, if they're being put in that situation and being bred that way, you're also consuming that negative energy too. Why would you want to eat that, when they're stressed out, when you know something's being killed for you, and you're just eating that. That's a big part of my book like what is defined as food, like pets versus other animals. My book kind of goes beyond that, where it's about life in general because is sentience necessarily the reason for whether or not you're eating something? Because life is still there, like plants are still alive. How is that different? What’s the difference between faces? I knew that I wanted to hit that because it's something I care about deeply. I'm not here to be anyone's educator, if you see the politics behind it and the social commentary in the book, great. If you couldn't read it, I'm okay with that too. I'm not against criticism. I know it's a hard read. I don't think easy reads are good for me. I'm not gonna lie and be like I love reading. I don't love reading. I read to be smart and to be able to communicate better and discuss things and understand things better. I'm not gonna waste my time reading something that's easybecause I don't even like reading. So why would I do that? Like then I'm just gonna watch a movie, which is easy to do, and I'm gonna enjoy myself.
I know that a lot of people, at least my family, have had words to say about what my book is like. You know, if it's too difficult to read, not in the way where it's so smart or anything like that, but it’s topics that are heavy and using really fucked up stuff, trying to be funny, where it's kind of chaotic in the sense that it represents my mind and you have to pay attention in order to see that, that's what I mean by it’s a hard read.
Where can people find your book, your artwork, and most importantly, find you?
Like any person who works for themselves, I’d prefer you go through sydtaylor.us! My book, right now it's at three bookstores. If people do read it, you can review me on Goodreads, because I heard that really helps. I just submitted to Writers Digest, yeah, that's what I got going on.
Support local by shopping for Slipper Camp at these local Chicago Bookstores:
Restoried Bookshop
4613 N. Kedzie Ave
Chicago IL 60625
Tangible Books
3326 S. Halsted St
Chicago IL 60608
Pilsen Community Books
1531 W 18th St
Chicago IL 60608
Thank you to Syd Taylor for sitting down and taking the time to chat with us!
Follow Syd Taylor on her socials!
Instagram: @sydtaylor.us