Taylor Shoop exhibits patchwork of photos
By Becky Barclay
Published in News on March 9, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
Taylor Shoop stands in front of his exhibit at the Arts Council of Wayne County titled "Make Quilts, Chapter 14 of the Art of War: A Photographic Exploration of Wartime Quilting." The free exhibit runs through March 21.
Taylor Shoop sees the world through kaleidoscope-like eyes, and that's what visitors to his art exhibit at the Arts Council of Wayne County will see, too.
"Make Quilts, Chapter 14 of the Art of War: A Photographic Exploration of Wartime Quilting" will run through March 21.
Shoop, 35, said the title of the exhibit is a play on words because there are only 13 actual chapters in the book "The Art of War."
His exhibit includes photographs he's taken at various locations throughout the United States -- and even from a plane high in the air. There are several that he's taken in Wayne County and the surrounding area, like city hall, lady in the park and the CSS Neuse in Kinston.
Shoopart as Shoop refers to his work is a style he's been working on for about three years now. He takes a photograph and duplicates it in whole or in part to come up with a kaleidoscope design.
When the Arts Council offered Shoop the opportunity to show some of his work, in conjunction with a quilting display, he decided on the relationship of quilting and war.
"I went home and started researching quilts and came across how they played a pretty big part of wars," he said. "In the south, the women made quilts and raised a bunch of money to pay for the ironclad gunships. That was their war effort."
Shoop said that northern women made quilts in response to the Union Army's request for quilts that would fit the soldiers' 7 by 4 foot cots. They did this by dividing two existing bed quilts, which were about 7 by 6 feet and sewing them into three cot-sized quilts. Northern women made and sold more than a quarter of a million quilts to help the war effort, he said.
"The image of two quilts being split apart, stripped of their unique identities and then forced back together was teeming with symbolism," Shoop said.
He decided to do a quilt exhibit of his own.
So he used his unique kaleidoscopic photos to create two quilts. One, a Confederate quilt, uses a medallion pattern, common in the south at that time. The focus photo is of the CSS Neuse with ornate borders of other photos going around it.
The Union quilt is an album style pattern. It pieces together several different blocks that each tell a story.
The blocks are of various monuments and other places like Victory monument at Yorktown, George Washington statue in Richmond, Va., Williamsburg, Monticello, the Washington Monument, New Mexico, Chicago, San Francisco and others.
"I composed my photos in photoshop and adobe illustrator to create the quilts," Shoop said.
Then he sent them off to a printer to be printed on canvas.
Shoop's two quilts are divided into three sections.
It took him about three months to finish the project.
"I like the relationship between the softness of quilts and the harshness of wars," Shoop said. "The clashing relationship of war was very intriguing."
What affected him the most about the project was the effort of military spouses.
"That's what I became 2 1/2 years ago when my wife joined the Air Force," Shoop said.
"It's people who can't necessarily fight on the battlefield, but want to contribute in some way and they made an incredible contribution. They could get together and have quilting parties while their spouses were away at war and it was consoling. "
Shoop calls his process kaleidoscopic photographic compositions.
"I hope people seeing the exhibit will take away that the world is more complex and can't really be answered with yes or no, black or white answers," he said. "I hope they start looking at things a little bit differently."
After the exhibit ends at the Arts Council here, Shoop will take his work to Kinston Community Council for the Arts to be shown June 11 through Aug. 8, with a reception June 11.
He's also working on a 9-by-18-foot mural at the office of Ann Marie Wright CPA in Goldsboro. It's a map of Goldsboro that Shoop painted on the wall, then put some of his kaleidoscopic photos on.