darlene r. taylor
Darlene R. Taylor's creative works explore narratives that reimagine what public history distorts and obscures about Black life. Using heirloom cloth, she assembles narrative portraits of the lifework, sweatwork, and lovework of everyday women. The vintage and antique materials in her HEIRLOOMS series create a hybrid form of archive that documents under-heard and under-imagined stories of family, home, and labor. Taylor's mixed media collage employs seamstress traditions women in her family taught her. Inspired by silhouette, she claims personal memories that resonate as she hand stitches fabrics, laces, linens, buttons, and ribbons on panels of paper. The resulting layers of texture and pattern convey memories of vulnerability and resilience.
Mixed media collage silhouette artist and writer
Based in Washington, DC and Maryland's eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay
Current Exhibitions
2025 July 5-27 The Beauty She Gave Us, International Arts & Artists Gallery, Washington, DC
2025 May 1-June 29 Art/History/Archive, Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD
Previous Exhibitions
2024 HEIRLOOMS, Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD
2024 Civil Rights at 60, DC Commission on Arts & Humanities, Washington, DC
2023 HEIRLOOMS from Behind Her Gaze, private gallery, Washington, DC
2023 Memories of a Dusty Road, Asbury United Methodist Church, Washington, DC
2022 Behind Her Gaze, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
Artist Residencies
2023 Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Amherst, VA
2022 Columbus Museum of Art Aminah Robinson Residency, Columbus, OH
Artist Fellowships
2023-2024, Solo Exhibition Artist Fellowship, Academy of Art, Easton, MD
2022 American Antiquarian Society, Wooster, MA
2023-2025 Artist Fellowship, DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, Washington, DC
2020-2022 Literature Fellowship, DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, Washington, DC
2019 Community of Writers, High Sierra Mountains, CA
2018 Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Lexington, KY
2017-2018 Kimbilio, Taos, NM
2015 AROHO, Ghost Ranch, Santa Fe, NM
2015 Callaloo, Brown University, Providence, RI
Permanent Collections
Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
Private and Corporate Collections
