Darlene R. Taylor

Darlene R. Taylor explores identity, race, kinship, place, and the journey from girlhood to womanhood in fiction and visual art. Re-membering and reclaiming a record of Black survival are at the center of her practice. With artifacts of lived experience: heirloom cloths, vintage handkerchiefs, laces, linens, worn cottons, antique buttons, and lyrics, she archives, documents, and reassembles memories in collages that are handstitched on panels of paper and cloth alongside handcut verses of poetry and prose.  The images and verses in her HEIRLOOMS series unravel what is remembered through what is passed down and preserved. The resulting layers of texture and pattern convey vulnerability and resilience. 

Through the HEIRLOOMS series, she crosses genres with stories in poetry, prose, and creative cuts of words through paper.  Her HEIRLOOMS poems are published in an art book that accompanies the recent exhibitions. Her short stories appear in journals and anthologies. Fellowships at the American Antiquarian

Society, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Kimibilio nurtured her while writing and creating the collages in HEIRLOOMS.