JANET TAYLOR PICKETT: NECESSARY MEMORIES

Janet Taylor Pickett, Melon Dress, 2001, oil, charcoal, oil stick and collage on canvas, 60 x 40 in
JANET TAYLOR PICKETT: NECESSARY MEMORIES

March 15–April 28, 2023

Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury

Necessary Memories is a solo exhibition of Janet Taylor Pickett that explores her sustained engagement with identity, heritage, and the complexity of lived experience. The exhibition is presented on the occasion of the inauguration of the Black Studies Center and the Black Studies major at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, an initiative representative of the College’s strong social justice mission and racial diversity. A survey of the artist’s prolific body of work from 1972 to 2021, the exhibition showcases over fifty (50) works that externalize the interior life of Janet Taylor Pickett. Intimate and confessional, Necessary Memories pinpoints moments of tension in competing desires for rootedness and freedom. Replete with visual motifs, Janet Taylor Pickett draws on personal biography as a compass to chart a path towards a broader collective heritage that prompts imaginative sustenance for the present.

Janet Taylor Pickett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1948, the third generation in her maternal family to be raised in that city, a stop on the Underground Railroad. Her father, Dempsey Taylor, Jr., was born in Brownsville, Tennessee, and traveled north during the Great Migration, settling with his family in Ypsilanti, Michigan. This imbrication of personal and shared Black history, concealed in Taylor Pickett’s birthplace, is central to her work. Attuned to the socio-political affordances of her practice, she wields her art as activism: a cautionary tale about the recalcitrance of historical trauma on both the individual and national psyche. Combining quilted constructions, sculptural works, and storytelling through images and handwritten texts, the artist conjures the past with ease, galvanized by her embrace of frustration and pain, and her reckoning with struggle as a touchstone for healing.

HERITAGE

Janet Taylor Pickett’s excavation of her heritage finds its beginnings in her 1972 MFA thesis at the University of Michigan, entitled, black art: reviewing its roots. This project catalyzed the artist’s activist concerns that became the conceptual framework for her artmaking. Adinkra, emblazoned on the book’s cover, was developed by the Ashanti tribes to symbolize various natural and metaphysical concepts. Mobilizing African visual poetics, Taylor Pickett reconceptualizes the relationship between text and image, narrative and myth—tensions and interchanges throughout her art practice.

Taylor Pickett’s thesis was a questionnaire to over three hundred (300) Black artists listed in the Afro- American Slide Depository at the University of Southern Alabama, including Romare Bearden, Benny Andrews, Emma Amos, and Jacob Lawrence, and a compilation of their survey responses. Taylor Pickett and Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) take Blackness as their formal and conceptual subject. ā€œMigration Seriesā€ (1940-41), Lawrence’s ambitious, sixty (60) panel work, focuses on the people at the heart of the great Migration, breaking apart the massive relocation into intimate vignettes. In these works, figures and landscapes are reduced to sparse shapes and abstracted figures. This economy of composition also characterizes ā€œThe Skin I’m Inā€ (2016), which reflects Taylor Pickett’s belief that simplified forms convey a wellspring of meaning. A spartan composition, ā€œThe Skin I’m Inā€ is a non- figurative portrait that deconstructs the female body, casting it as a flat, white dress sewed with beads, collaged with African masks and ridged tribal markings, and set against Matisse Cutout and a cropped photograph of the artist. In aggregate, these sewed surfaces form an epidermis that literally sutures beauty to pain.

IDENTITY

While deep historical roots and the traditions of Janet Taylor Pickett’s ancestors are at the fore of her conceptual concerns, she assembles these histories to investigate her identity. In ā€œMelon Dressā€ (2001), the artist enlists a dress form patterned with watermelons and cotton tufts, pejorative symbols yoked to the trauma of slavery, as a metaphor for selfhood. A scroll wraps around the dress featuring text from Larry Vincent Buster’s The Art and History of Black Memorabilia (2000) that elucidates the historical significance of the watermelon:

Watermelon is believed to have originated more than 4,000 years ago in southwestern Africa, where it provided a ready-made water canteen.

It’s high in nutrients and low in calories—just the kind of food to keep slaves alive aboard ship during the transatlantic passage from Africa.

The artist’s figuration of the written word further underlines the socio-historical charge of her work; in coopting and retooling traumatic history by way of watermelon and cotton, she generates a new personal mythology that combines words and repeating visual motifs to forge an alternative canon.

Identity is also a central theme in ā€œAn Odysseyā€ (2014-2015), Taylor Pickett’s milestone wall installation, comprised of over fifty (50) dress forms. Deeply influenced by the color and textiles of Henri Matisse (1869-1954), the artist made cutouts as open secrets; portals to the past that declare their story through a mixture of photographs and collages, while retaining a patina of mysticism and abstraction. Solemn and meditative at times and buoyant and animated at others, the works are, she contends, ā€œconduits and vessels of meaning…visual records, captured memories, observations, and inspirations.ā€ Each dress form cutout compels the viewer to consider its interrelated images, as a myriad of stories reveal themselves. An Odyssey is a matrix for Taylor Pickett’s creative process, a conceptual tool to examine identity politics, and a vessel for transformation.

The artist’s quest to unpack the ancestral heritage nestled in her identity manifests in ā€œHot Houseā€ (1996). An oil painting with collage elements on combined un-stretched canvases, the work is an amalgamation of the artist’s philosophical and aesthetic preoccupations in the early 1990s. Teeming with verdure that presses out of the frame with an anthropomorphic aliveness, the work asserts sexuality, sensuousness, and nature. It bears the influence of Taylor Pickett’s creative conversant, Sam Gilliam (1933-2022), with whom she worked at the Vermont Studio School in 1991. Gilliam, known for his ā€œDrape Paintings,ā€ encouraged Taylor Pickett to ā€œget off the canvasā€ and wrestle with the inchoate three-dimensionality in her work. A turning point in Taylor Pickett’s practice, the conversation instilled in her a sense of liberation that was as emotional as it was formal.

COMPLEXITY OF LIVED EXPERIENCE

Engaging with beauty and the difficulty of embodiment, Janet Taylor Pickett produces work that speaks to the complexity of lived experience. Art’s capacity to function as a totalizing enactment of life is most acutely evident in her fabric constructions, which she began making after her father’s death in 1992. Quilted on felt, ā€œHealing Shirt” (2007) demonstrates a striking tactility and weight. Its display of talismanic forms and Christian iconography renders the work both an homage to Black faith and a votive object in its own right. In its immersive humanism, Taylor Pickett’s oeuvre resonates with German performance artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986). Beuys, who constructed environments out of felt and other materials, was enraptured by the ritualistic interactions created by participatory art. Similarly energized by the metaphysical transmissions afforded through visual work, Janet Taylor Pickett affirms art as healing; a channel to a realm deeper and more expansive than the purely visible world. Beuys’ notion of art as a ā€œsocial sculpture,ā€ a shared Happening that can reshape society and culture, is taken up by Taylor Pickett. The artist uses Blackness as a ā€œsocial sculptureā€; her embodied experience as an African American person is her art.

Aesthetic and existential arrival are realized in “She Blooms in Her Own Timeā€ (2021). [Pic 7] This self- portrait enacts the apotheosis of self-actualization; the artist-as-subject is endowed with full agency and regards the viewer with a gaze that harbors the command of a mystic, seeing through and beyond the viewer. Flanked by slabs of saturated color, she deploys orange burnt sienna, the skin tone that resembles her father’s tanned forearm, and that she uses to depict all of her subjects. While Matisse clearly figures as a creative interlocutor, the work is utterly authentic in its articulation of Taylor Pickett’s distinct narrative voice. As the conceptual linchpins of the exhibition, ā€œHealing Shirtā€ and ā€œShe Blooms in her Own Timeā€ confer that Necessary Memories is seeing the life of Janet Taylor Pickett. These two works posit the convergence of the artist’s social, ethical, and metaphysical commitments with her blossoming as an artist. As she erases boundaries to create work that is relatable and transcendental, Taylor Pickett offers a visual scripture that is entwined with her own becoming.

Necessary Memories affirms how art is a physical experience, and a public one—an impulse that is intuitive, introspective, and geared towards the world outside oneself. Sensitive and visceral, Taylor Pickett delivers a narrative of mythic proportions through her radiant, experimental, and intensely articulate works. History suffuses Janet Taylor Pickett’s art. As sustained visual poems, the paintings, collages, and sewed works in Necessary Memories probe a personal and collective past to posit a distinctly Black mythology of Self. Multi-textured and multi-dimensional, with vibrant color and unexpected juxtapositions, Taylor Pickett’s work is a serious intellectual interrogation of beauty, nature, and the human condition. Galvanized by the socio-political activities in her formative years, Taylor Pickett began to formulate ā€œan aesthetic language, a visual synergyā€ that spoke to the demands of the historical moment. The artist’s activist concerns remain a through-line in her practice, as recent paintings build upon the commitments and convictions articulated in her early work. Necessary Memories traces the artist’s swan dive into the murky waters of both her own and her country’s past, and her ultimate resurfacing, clear-eyed, with a deeply embodied sense of truth in her art. Janet Taylor Pickett is the artist, and Janet Taylor Pickett is the oeuvre.

Dr. Jennifer Baahng, Guest Curator

Related:

Janet Taylor Pickett

Janet Taylor Pickett

CONJURE
October 13 - November 30, 2025
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Memory of Water II, 2021 Acrylic and collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

The Selma Burke Invitational African American Art Show
May 30 - June 29, 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

April – May, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February - April 2024

Categories: exhibitions

Tags:

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

January 20 – March 11, 2023

Jennifer Baahng Gallery is pleased to present PITCHES & SCRIPTS, a group exhibition of works on paper. On view are ink and graphite drawings, collages, inkjet prints and sewed surfaces produced from the 1980’s through 2020. In pooling together six artists, the exhibition pitches a fermentation of ideas, technologies, and political stances that connote rupture and disintegration, while scripting growth, movement and new life. PITCHES & SCRIPTS runs from January 20 through March 11, 2023, with its opening reception on Friday, January 20, 6 – 8 PM.

The spectral presence of history suffuses the work of Janet Taylor Pickett and Zhang Hongtu. Blackness is a ā€œdeclarative statementā€ for Janet Taylor Pickett (b. 1948), whose works, as ongoing visual poems,Ā  probe personal and collective memory. Dresses Akimbo, on view, elaborates upon the symbolism of that gesture: a stance of power, bewilderment, and love. A forerunner of Chinese Political Pop Art whose work engages a multilayered discourse,Ā  Zhang Hongtu (b. 1943) asserts themes of dislocation, national identity, propaganda, and politics in the Long Live Mao series, which is equal parts whimsical and profound.

Idiomerica by Sharon Butler (b. 1959) was catalyzed by the artist’s move from New York City to the suburbs. The works investigate the visual grammar of capitalist suburban Americana through video animations, text projects, digital drawings, and the resulting tendencies of reductive art.Ā Conversely, moving from the Midwest to New York City, Jeff Gabel (b. 1968) developed Short Fiction Sketches in scribbly and smudge tone drawings. The works externalize the imaginationĀ  of a solitary artist inducted into a sea of uncanny urban experiences.

The Terminal CenturyĀ by R.C. Baker (b. 1960) seethes with existential angst, as painted and collaged elements tremor with disruption and discordance, while also pointing to the beauty nestled in such moments of ostensive entropy. Similarly responding to a post-War world order, Bjorn Meyer-Ebrecht (b. 1972), makes ink drawings at a monumental scale, creating a pictorial architecture in ink that displays luminous materiality. In their rich, textured surfaces, the works included push the pictorial plane from drawing into painting.Ā 

PITCHES & SCRIPTS assembles the memories of the artists at a formative historical moment, and inquires how art shapes history by responding to cultural shifts or by instigating them itself. As we are flungā€”ā€˜pitched’—into the future, the exhibition looks to this collection of work for a loose, dynamic script for how to narrativize ourselves in the present.Ā  PITCHES & SCRIPTS renders a ā€˜soft landing’ for our launch into the new year.

Related:

Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
RC Baker: Noise for Signal

R.C. BAKER: Noise For Signal

May 24 - June 30, 2018
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
Sharon Butler

NEXT MOVES

Sharon Butler
Sept 15 - Nov 15, 2022
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
Janet Taylor Pickett

Janet Taylor Pickett

CONJURE
October 13 - November 30, 2025
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Memory of Water II, 2021 Acrylic and collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

The Selma Burke Invitational African American Art Show
May 30 - June 29, 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

April – May, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February - April 2024
Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso MÔlaga 

Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso MÔlaga 

October 3, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
(DE)CONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY: THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND BEYOND November 13, 2022 to March 12, 2023

Zhang Hongtu lectures and exhibits at the Wende Museum

November 13, 2022 - March 12, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Zhang Hongtu

VAN GOGH / BODHIDHARMA

Zhang Hongtu
March 25 - April 27, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021

TANGO

TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition

July 13 - August 17, 2022

Romare Bearden
Sharon Butler
Chun Kwang Young
Jeff Gabel
Michael McClard
Mario Merz
Jaye Moon
Mr.
Janet Taylor Pickett
Osvaldo Romberg
David Salle
Zhang Hongtu

Related:

Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
Sharon Butler

NEXT MOVES

Sharon Butler
Sept 15 - Nov 15, 2022
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Michael McClard

BIZARRE DELIGHT

Michael McClard
Jan 26 - Feb 28, 2022
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
The Power of Randomness

POWER OF RANDOMNESS

July - September, 2025
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Jaye Moon F.U.C.k, 2012 Acrylic on canvas 8 x 10 inches

JAYE MOON

PRIVATE
June 1 - 30, 2025
brooklyn museum logo

Brooklyn Museum : The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition

October 4, 2024 – January 26, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
snowboard

MR.

Snowboard
MR.

MR.

Janet Taylor Pickett

Janet Taylor Pickett

CONJURE
October 13 - November 30, 2025
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Memory of Water II, 2021 Acrylic and collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

The Selma Burke Invitational African American Art Show
May 30 - June 29, 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

April – May, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February - April 2024
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso MÔlaga 

Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso MÔlaga 

October 3, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
(DE)CONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY: THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND BEYOND November 13, 2022 to March 12, 2023

Zhang Hongtu lectures and exhibits at the Wende Museum

November 13, 2022 - March 12, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Zhang Hongtu

VAN GOGH / BODHIDHARMA

Zhang Hongtu
March 25 - April 27, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021

NECESSARY MEMORIES

JTP

NECESSARY MEMORIES

Sept 14 – Nov 20, 2021

MEET THE ARTIST:

Sept 15 & 16, 12PM – 3PM

LIVE INTERVIEW:

Janet Taylor Pickett with Marion K. Maneker

Sept 14 at 5PM

Marion K. Maneker is President & Editorial Director of ARTnews, Art in America, and Art Market Monitor

ā€œMy Blackness is a declarative statement in my work. There are wonderful, discarded objects brought home by my father and botanical prints my mother found from various secondhand stores. Makers of things and tellers of stories surrounded me. In the late 1960s and early 1970s in the midst of socio-political activities, I began to formulate an aesthetic language, a visual synergy. The symbolism of the African American quilt, the pejorative images of the watermelon became part of my cryptology.ā€

— Janet Taylor Pickett


NECESSARY MEMORIES chronicles Janet Taylor Pickett’s journey as an artist, showcasing selected works from the 1980s through 2021. Coexisting in her often-ornate paintings and collages is imagery drawn from art history, Africa, America and Europe, present and past wherein linear timeframes and logical geographic or cultural relationships are defied. Bold and unapologetically stated, her lyrical and animated work is a multi-textural exposĆ© referencing her varied experiences. The artist offers a confessional narrative illuminated through images of memory and identity. NECESSARY MEMORIES is a living metaphor of the artist finding her way and establishing her presence in the world. This is Taylor Pickett’s first solo exhibition with JENNIFER BAAHNG GALLERY and her first in New York.


What is evident in both bookends of her ongoing art practice is that Taylor Pickett is a storyteller drawing on and weaving throughout her work vivid overlapping motifs. The black female figure that populates her creations are singular women in a singular time and space, drawing on harrowing tales of the Underground Railroad and her own family’s stories as part of the Great Migration that brought them to the Midwest. Her pathway to becoming an artist was tilled in that verdant soil of memory, reflected in the richness of her palette and the skin tones of her figures. These women are manifestly strong and defiant, a posture evident in their intense gazes and frequently in a stance with arms akimbo, itself a representation of power.Ā  Ā 


Metaphor plays a central role in Taylor Pickett’s art. This is most apparent in the prevalence of the dress form in many of her works that serves as a stand-in for female identity and a vessel for memory. Another frequent motif is the watermelon, employed as an evocative and provocative symbol in her compositions. The artist sees this ancient form as ā€œa woman’s fruit–red, juicy, sweet, sensuous, round.ā€ Flora and fauna permeate her compositions as well, surfacing in imaginative forms that contribute to the allegorical nature of her work. In the artist’s use of autobiographical symbolism and engagement with issues of fecundity one finds resonance with the self-portraits of Frida Kahlo.


While Romare Bearden’s influence is reflected both visually and conceptually in Taylor Pickett’s multifaceted collage techniques, she has also found frequent inspiration in her masterful interaction with European ā€œmasters.ā€ In the cornucopia of artistic styles upon which the artist draws, one can see in her use of color and form vestiges of Henri Matisse. And the remarkable illumination in Johannes Vermeer’s interior scenes has echoes in Taylor Pickett’s more recent paintings. Her engagement with these artists challenges exclusionary practices of canonical art history, laying claim to her rightful place in this creative dialogue with unique compositions expressing her private and intimate musings in her own distinctive voice.


Revealed in this mosaic of tantalizing work is the way in which memories mold us into what we become. Enchantingly eclectic, NECESSARY MEMORIES is a feast for the eye and the soul. It is a window into Janet Taylor Pickett’s restless inner travels and reconciliation with her personal and inherited past.

Article on ARTnews

ARTnews

View on YouTube

YouTube

Related:

Janet Taylor Pickett

Janet Taylor Pickett

CONJURE
October 13 - November 30, 2025
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Memory of Water II, 2021 Acrylic and collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

The Selma Burke Invitational African American Art Show
May 30 - June 29, 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

April – May, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February - April 2024

Categories: exhibitions

Tags:

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Ā 

LOVE DIFFERENCE

May 15 – June 15, 2021Ā 

Eric Brown

ā€œMy recent paintings were made during a pandemic. Making them was a daily meditative practice. It was like keeping a journal. French philosopher Roland Barthes draws an analogy between text and textiles (ā€œtextā€ comes from the Latin texere, to weave). Through a repetition of mark-making, my paintings appear woven. They are not painted to look like textile. Their appearance is a byproduct of the painting process. The completed painting is a record of my experience making it. The eye follows ā€œthreadsā€ of paint, their accumulation creating a larger whole. My new work is paradoxical: slow yet fast, precise yet open, deliberate yet intuitive. I am freer for having made them.”

Janet Taylor Pickett

ā€œMy Blackness is a declarative statement in my work. There are wonderful discarded objects brought home by my father and botanical prints my mother found from various second hand stores. Makers of things and tellers of stories surrounded me. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’ in the midst of sociopolitical activities, I began to formulate an aesthetic language, a visual synergy. The symbolism of the African American quilt, the pejorative images of the watermelon became part of my cryptology.ā€Ā Ā 

Zhang Hongtu

…In Memory of Tseng Kwong Chi (1991) is a photo series that looked to the work of one of Zhang’s contemporaries, the Hong Kong-born performance artist Tseng Kwong Chi, who died of AIDS in 1990. Appropriating Tseng’s photographs, Zhang used the work of his friend to further extrapolate upon the mechanisms by which iconography constructs identity and how artistic intervention can disrupt the language of power. Created for the 1991 exhibition Dismantling Invisibility; Asia and Pacific Island Artists Respond to the AIDS Crisis, Zhang’s work selected fifteen photographs from Tseng’s acclaimed self-portrait series East Meets West (also known as the Expeditionary Self-Portraits, 1979-89) and reconfigured them into photo collages using his familiar epoxy technique. In these photos, Tseng performed the role of ā€œambiguous ambassadorā€ and posited himself the stereotypical tourist sites (the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, the Hollywood sign) while dressed in a Mao suit. The series was a subversive yet ludic exploration of cultural identity, perception, and the status of the individual amid the monumental. In Zhang’s reworking of these photos, he cut out the figure of his close friend and colleague, leaving a ghostly silhouette in his absence. The removal of Tseng’s body next to the famous profiles of monuments and natural wonders created a displacement that was not only a deeply sentimental tribute to a dear friend, but, in the words of Zhang, ā€œdismantledā€ the imagery further, disrupting historical continuity…

ā€œArt and China After 1989, Theater of the Worldā€
Guggenheim 2017
Page 237

https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/art-and-china-after-1989-theater-of-the-world

Related:

Eric Brown

ALREADY AND NOT YET

Eric Brown
May 5 - June 25, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021
Janet Taylor Pickett

Janet Taylor Pickett

CONJURE
October 13 - November 30, 2025
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Memory of Water II, 2021 Acrylic and collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

The Selma Burke Invitational African American Art Show
May 30 - June 29, 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

April – May, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February - April 2024
Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso MÔlaga 

Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso MÔlaga 

October 3, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
(DE)CONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY: THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND BEYOND November 13, 2022 to March 12, 2023

Zhang Hongtu lectures and exhibits at the Wende Museum

November 13, 2022 - March 12, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Zhang Hongtu

VAN GOGH / BODHIDHARMA

Zhang Hongtu
March 25 - April 27, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021

MORE THAN ONE WAY HOME

SOPHIE MATISSE
MORE THAN ONE WAY HOME

October 10 - November 24, 2020​

Baahng Gallery celebrates its 2020 reopening with More Than One Way Home, an exhibition featuring the gallery’s represented artists: Sophie Matisse, Janet Taylor Pickett, and Zhang Hongtu. The exhibition offers a glimpse into the struggles of the artists and their coming to terms with their individual challenges. Sophie, the great-granddaughter of Henri Matisse and step-granddaughter of Marcel Duchamp, is an American oil painter working in New York City; Janet is an African American multi-media artist working on the West Coast; Hongtu is a Muslim Chinese artist who has been working in New York since 1982. The exhibition acknowledges and affirms that home, for these artists, is not situated in nostalgia. Rather, through a cyclical process of revisitation, they find home in both the present and future potential. More Than One Way Home follows a journey through each artist’s rite of passage in life and is a compelling visualization of distinct, individual expressive forms. Baahng Gallery is open Monday thru Friday, noon to 3pm, and by appointment.



Selected works from Sophie Matisse’s ā€˜Be Back in Five Minutes’ series are strategically installed in the gallery. Returning to renowned paintings by Gustave Courbet, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Charles Wilson Peale through her unique lens, she appropriates and embellishes upon, or subtracts from, recognizable works from art history. The interplay between absence and presence in these haunting paintings is evocative. Featured as well is her most recent painting, ā€˜Homeward 1’. In this contemplative autobiographical tondo completed during the pandemic quarantine, the artist positions an errant chess piece peering out over a window ledge into the hazy verdant void, invoking solitude and the uncertain but hopeful future ahead.


ā€˜Mappings of Memory’, a survey showcasing Janet Taylor Picket’s works, introduces selected paintings, collages, sculptures, and quilts from the 1990s through 2020. Her experiential work chronicles her journey as an African American woman, daughter, mother, and artist. Images drawn from art history, Africa, America and Europe, past and present, coexist in her often-ornate collages and paintings, defying linear timeframes and logical geographic or cultural relationships. The inclusion of the shipping crates in which the works were transported to the gallery adds a poignant historical dimension to the installation, referencing both her personal odyssey and that of her ancestors. The suggestive titles of the works on view reflect her creative vision: ā€˜Spirit Catchers', ā€˜Hot House', 'Melon Dress’, 'Exotica Botanica’, ā€˜Thoughtful Resilience’, and ā€˜She Has An Agency,’ the latter produced in 2020. These works constitute the artist’s confessional narrative circling back with newly found wisdom in life as well as in art. More Than One Way Home inaugurates Pickett’s representation with Baahng Gallery and presents her first New York exhibition.


Zhang Hongtu’s video, ā€˜Van Gogh/Bodhidharma’, is the centerpiece of his installation. This mesmerizing video production builds on his seven-year project (2007 – 2014), a set of 39 ink paintings that rework Van Gogh’s 39 extant self-portrait oil paintings in the style of classical Zen portraits of Bodhidharma. Revealed in both this video and the original endeavor upon which it was based are parallels in the lives and aesthetics of Zhang and Van Gogh. The artist compels viewers in both iterations of this project to reconsider Van Gogh’s fascination with Asian aesthetics, registering a more philosophical connection and inner resonance between the European post-impressionist artist and the East. Reflecting upon this project, Zhang expresses his approach as one that ā€˜dares to mate a horse with an ox’. Framing the video are wall texts quoting provocative passages from Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo and to Paul Gauguin. More Than One Way Home marks the launch of Zhang’s visionary ā€˜Van Gogh/Bodhidharma Project’—a quixotic effort to unite his ink paintings with the original painted portraits—and announces his official gallery representation with Baahng Gallery.

Related:

SECRET GARDEN

SECRET GARDEN

Sophie Matisse
May 15 - June 30, 2021
SOPHIE MATISSE

MORE THAN ONE WAY HOME

Sophie Matisse
Janet Taylor Pickett
Zhang Hongtu
October 10 - November 24, 2020
SophieMatisse at the Art Newspaper

Sophie Matisse was interviewed by BBC TWO on “Becoming Matisse”

Broadcasted on Saturday, April 25, 2020, 9:15pm - 10:15pm.
Sophie Matisse, Nighthawks

SOPHIE MATISSE

Be Back in 5
April - June, 2020
Janet Taylor Pickett

Janet Taylor Pickett

CONJURE
October 13 - November 30, 2025
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Memory of Water II, 2021 Acrylic and collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

The Selma Burke Invitational African American Art Show
May 30 - June 29, 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

April – May, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February - April 2024
Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso MÔlaga 

Zhang Hongtu at Museo Picasso MÔlaga 

October 3, 2023 - March 31, 2024
Madison Ave New York Picasso, Welcome to America June 15 – July 31, 2023

PICASSO, WELCOME TO AMERICA

June 15 – Sept 27, 2023
Pitches & Scripts

PITCHES & SCRIPTS

Group Exhibition
January 20 - March 11, 2023
(DE)CONSTRUCTING IDEOLOGY: THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND BEYOND November 13, 2022 to March 12, 2023

Zhang Hongtu lectures and exhibits at the Wende Museum

November 13, 2022 - March 12, 2023
TANGO | Summer Exhibition | July 13 - August 17, 2022

TANGO

Summer Exhibition
July 13 - August 17, 2022
Zhang Hongtu

VAN GOGH / BODHIDHARMA

Zhang Hongtu
March 25 - April 27, 2022
LOVE DIFFERENCE

LOVE DIFFERENCE

Eric Brown, Janet Taylor Pickett, Zhang Hongtu
May 15 - June 15, 2021

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

Janet Taylor Pickett

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

Lives and works in California

ARTIST BIO

Janet Taylor Pickett (b. 1948) earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan School of Art in 1970, followed by a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan School of Architecture and Design in 1972. She pioneered a groundbreaking visual language to explore themes of Blackness, identity, and the complexities of lived experience. She furthered her education at Parsons School of Design, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the Vermont Studio School, where she had the honor of collaborating with Sam Gilliam. She devoted over thirty years to teaching and developing curricula focused on the History of African American Art at Essex County College and Bloomfield College. Additionally, she was a founding member of Montclair University’s African American Studies program. Her academic and artistic distinctions include grants and fellowships from the New Jersey Council of the Arts, the Ford Foundation, and the Mid-Atlantic States Art Council. Taylor Pickett previously served as Chair of the African American Cultural Committee at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey. Her artist residencies include the Pilchuck Glass School, the Valparaiso Foundation in Majorca, Spain, and the University of Eastern New Mexico. She has also been a Visiting Artist at the University of Wisconsin and Lafayette College. Moreover, Janet Taylor Pickett delivered the keynote address for the Penny W. Stamps Commencement 2024 at the University of Michigan.

Through the development of an innovative visual vocabulary, AKIMBO EXOTICA, coined by JENNIFER BAAHNG, Janet Taylor Pickett has established herself as a prominent figure in contemporary painting. She is widely recognized as a pioneering female painter whose work is inspired by Romare Bearden, Bette Saar, Sam Gilliam, and Henri Matisse. Her work has been exhibited in both solo and group shows across the country and internationally, and is part of many public and private art collections. Her works have been displayed at esteemed institutions such as The Studio Museum in Harlem, Howard University, and Telfair Museums, among others. Her notable work, ā€œAnd She Was Bornā€ (2020), was prominently featured on the cover of the exhibition catalog for Seeing Differently: The Phillips Collects for a New Century (2021) at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. Important museum exhibitions includeĀ Progressions: A Cultural LegacyĀ at MoMA/PS1,Ā African American Women Artists and the Power of Their GazeĀ at the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland,Ā The Matisse SeriesĀ at the Montclair Art Museum,Ā The Atlantic World-Layered HistoriesĀ at the Harvard Art Museums,Ā Hagar’s DressĀ at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, as well as exhibitions organized by African Friends of Museums in Israel, Western Washington University Museum, SUNY Old Westbury, The Studio Museum of Harlem, Howard University, Telfair Museums, a Smithsonian affiliate The Morris Museum, Denver Art Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, Fairfield University Art Museum, Hammonds House Museum, Northern Illinois University Museum, and Brandywine Workshop & Archive. Janet Taylor Pickett is represented by Jennifer Baahng Gallery.

SPOTLIGHT

Play Video

CREDIT: Ben Zink, Videographer, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan

Janet Taylor Pickett
The Stamps Commencement 2024 Keynote Speaker
December 19, 2024, at the University Of Michigan

Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan, presented the life and career of the Stamps Commencement 2024 speaker, Janet Taylor Pickett, on December 19, 2024.Ā  In this video, Taylor Pickett discusses her initial interest in making art, her time as a student at U-M, and the challenges and successes she’s had as an artist throughout her career.

Play Video

Necessary Memories

A Conversation with Marion K. Maneker and Janet Taylor Pickett

Tuesday, September 14, at 5PM at Jennifer Baahng Gallery

On September 14th, 2021, ARTnews President and Editorial Director Marion K. Maneker joined artist Janet Taylor Pickett for a discussion of ā€œNecessary Memoriesā€ (Sept 14 – Nov 20, 2021),Ā  Ā  Ā  her solo exhibition at JENNIFER BAAHNG. The show chronicles Taylor Pickett’s journey as an artist, showcasing selected works from the 1980’s through 2021. In their conversation, Maneker and Taylor Pickett discuss how Blackness functions as what Taylor Pickett calls a ā€œdeclarative statementā€ in her work, and the role that history and narrative play in her practice. Born in Ann Arbor Michigan, Taylor Pickett is a mixed media artist whose work is inspired by her life experience as an African American woman.

Ā 

Related:

Janet Taylor Pickett

Janet Taylor Pickett

CONJURE
October 13 - November 30, 2025
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Memory of Water II, 2021 Acrylic and collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

The Selma Burke Invitational African American Art Show
May 30 - June 29, 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

April – May, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February - April 2024

Categories: artists

Tags:

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

Mappings of Memory

April – June, 2020

……………………….ā€œThroughout my development as an artist, I began to recognize ā€˜home’ to be a metaphor; an idea for finding my visual voice.Ā  The ā€˜home’ of personal geography, the self-landscape of memory revealed, become the journey from which the artworks in this exhibition have been created.ā€ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦ā€¦.

Due to the ongoing situation with COVID-19, Baahng Gallery is postponing upcoming exhibitions and programs. In the meantime, we will be providing series of online exhibitions and announcements.Ā  For information about the exhibitions or the works, please contact us at inquiries@baahng.com

Related:

Janet Taylor Pickett

Janet Taylor Pickett

CONJURE
October 13 - November 30, 2025
Sue McNally Jaye Moon Janet Taylor Pickett

PARADE

June 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Memory of Water II, 2021 Acrylic and collage on canvas 40 x 40 inches

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

The Selma Burke Invitational African American Art Show
May 30 - June 29, 2025
Janet Taylor Pickett Entering the Gee’s Bend, 2013 Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, graphite, photos on Arches paper 30 x 22 in.

JANET TAYLOR PICKETT

April – May, 2025
TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE September 3 – November 2, 2024 HANNAM, SEOUL

TRANSPACIFIC: LOVE DIFFERENCE

Sept 3 - Nov 2, 2024
GANGNAM, SEOUL PERFECT LOVERS August 16 - October 19, 2024

TRANSPACIFIC: PERFECT LOVERS

Sept 5 - Oct 19, 2024
The Muse, 2023 Acrylic on canvas 48x48 in.

PRIDE AND INSOUCIANCE

February - April 2024

Categories: exhibitions

Tags: