Vineyard Visionary Brings South African Art to Featherstone

Splitting her time between Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Town, South Africa, Kara Taylor brings her two worlds together in her art — and now, she’s bringing them together in a curated gallery show.

COLLIDE opens August 6 at Featherstone Center for the Arts, and is Ms. Taylor and Featherstone’s first international show. Featuring 23 artists from central and southern Africa and about 70 works, Ms. Taylor said that the show is also the largest curatorial project she has taken on to date.

Ms. Taylor grew up on the Vineyard and has long been part of the Island art scene. She began traveling to South Africa seven years ago, and for the past five has worked in a studio space at Side Street Studios, a shared space for artists in Cape Town.

“I just fell in love with South Africa. I fell in love with the people, the landscape,” she said. “The cultural diversity is unparalleled. They call it the rainbow nation for a reason.”

 

She now spends six months there each year, and said she creates most of her own art in South Africa among other talented artists who inspire her. She spends the other six months of the year on the Vineyard, running her Chilmark gallery during the summer season where she represents herself as opposed to selling her work in someone else’s space.

“I didn’t really want to go through gallery representation because I wanted to know who buys my work,” she said.

She opened her first location at Nip ‘N’ Tuck Farm in West Tisbury, then moved to Main street in Vineyard Haven and in 2013 settled into her current space on South Road in Chilmark, the former gallery site of Island artist Stan Murphy.

The up-Island space offers more room for events and is more peaceful than bustling Main street, she said. A green field stretches out behind the building, and Ms. Taylor said she jumped at the opportunity to move there.

“I moved off Main street just sort of wanting to be more of a destination gallery,” she said. “I felt like I had enough of a name for myself that people would come and find me up here.... And this is just so pretty.”

 

Ann Smith, Featherstone’s executive director, approached Ms. Taylor a few years ago to suggest that she guest curate a show at Featherstone’s gallery, Ms. Taylor said.

Ms. Taylor has curated shows before but COLLIDE is her largest show yet. She knew exactly what she wanted to do — she wanted to bring her two communities together.

The show is inspired by the people she has met while spending time in South Africa. Bringing central and southern African art and artists to the Vineyard is a collision of her two worlds, she said.

About half of the artists featured in COLLIDE are part of the collective that works out of Side Street, Ms. Taylor said.

“I wanted to bring my South African community of artists plus some of my inspirations here with their work. Martha’s Vineyard is a real hub for intellectuals and affluent people, so they have a good audience.”

She said the show will push the envelope for gallery showings on the Vineyard, bringing in work that expresses perspectives from artists working in central and southern Africa, where social and economic division has played a major role in their work.

 

 

“South Africa has a painful history,” she said. “You feel the tension pretty palpably when you’re there.”

Her hope is that the show will give viewers on the Vineyard insight into the strong work coming from artists working in the region. She also hopes to emphasize the value of affordable shared studio spaces for artists.

“We work very, sort of, solitary here on the Vineyard,” Ms. Taylor said. “We don’t have shared, collective spaces together, and I really want that for the Island.”

On August 30, Ms. Taylor plans to hold a discussion with some of the artists featured in the show and the creator of Cape Town’s Side Street Studios, Elad Kirschenbaum. The relationships and environment that Side Street cultivates are a big part of why Ms. Taylor returns to South Africa each winter.

Cyrus Kabiru, a Kenyan multimedia artist whose work is now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Sophia Van Wyk, a sculptor, will be in attendance at the event on August 30.

The work featured in COLLIDE spans many mediums, from paintings to textiles to jewelry making and more. Ms. Taylor said the experience of working on the show has been a big undertaking, but also an important one for her.

“I feel really honored to be able to represent them in the best way I know how,” she said. “And I have to thank Featherstone for giving me the go-ahead.”