About Taylor Smith
Taylor Smith is an American contemporary artist whose work explores the intersection of technology, popular culture and collective memory. Working across painting, assemblage and mixed media, Smith incorporates obsolete technologies and familiar visual languages to examine how objects and images acquire meaning—and what remains after their original function disappears.
Smith studied fine art in Nürnberg and Berlin while living and working in Germany. In 1986, while in Berlin, she participated with fellow art students in the preparation and base-layer painting for Keith Haring’s mural on the Berlin Wall. The experience became an early point of connection between Smith’s developing practice and the legacy of twentieth-century Pop Art.
Material transformation is central to Smith’s work. Vintage computer disks, commercial packaging, found printed matter and other culturally familiar objects are reconstructed through painting, screen printing, collage and assemblage. Rather than treating obsolete materials simply as artifacts of nostalgia, Smith uses them as physical records of changing technologies, consumer culture and personal history.
Her recent Vinyl Series brings this investigation into direct conversation with recorded music. Constructed from vintage 3.5-inch floppy disks and custom-fabricated aluminum center discs, the works reimagine culturally significant records through a technological format that has itself become obsolete. Handwritten labels, discarded software and traces of previous use remain visible, allowing anonymous personal histories to coexist with music embedded in collective memory.
Smith has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally, with work presented in gallery, museum and corporate contexts. Her work is held in public, corporate and private collections including the Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Eli Lilly and Company and the collection of Madeleine Albright. Major commissioned and site-specific projects have included works for Goldman Sachs, InterContinental Hotels, Carnival Cruise Line, the Charles Krug Winery and hospitality environments in the United States, Canada and Europe.
Smith lives and works in Indianapolis, Indiana.