An admitted “obsessive forager,” Taylor Barnett jokes, “I have the hardest time looking up. I am constantly looking at the ground, surveying for pieces – whatever those may be, bottlecaps that strike me interesting, rocks that catch my eye, small glass pieces that shine brightly. I find infinite beauty in those cast offs – whether by human hand or nature.” This capturing of “what others don’t see or choose not to see value in” started early in her childhood and set the eventual path for Barnett’s inaugural entry into the Mathews-Sanders Sculpture Garden, Greatest Sum. “This piece centers solely on that idea of cast offs and repurposing those, reinventing them, reimagining their story and meaning and paying close attention to what happens when these scraps, throw-aways, delinquent cast offs deemed unnecessary and impure in someone else’s art or story merge and unite in this piece to reveal great power and beauty and strength.” A Mississippi native, Barnett admits, “The time I spend organizing these pieces into a skeleton design, the time I’m on the ground moving and removing, adding and subtracting pieces to tell these stories or the story; man, that’s it, right there. That’s play time for me. That’s the ‘why’ to why I do this.”
Greatest Sum by Taylor Barnett
