Central Park, October 2013

 People-watching in the Sheep's Meadow of Central Park, NYC.

 My wonderful son and me walking through the park.

Unfortunately, the picture with Kimber didn't turn out so well.

A painter in the park who stood and painted a few feet behind where we sat to watch people romp in the Sheep's Meadow.

A detail. Lovely, bright work.

More NYCC 2013

 Handsome Matt cutting his eyes just like my daddy. Uncanny!

Danger Will Robinson! There were aliens at every turn in the Jacob Javitz Center.

 Cosplay couple.

 Gay comics artist Tim Fish, a lovely ginger in Artist Alley who signed my book, "Trust/Truth."

 At the subway platform in Brooklyn. Classic Matt & Kimber.

A Miyazaki-like creature gets a ride on the show floor.

NY Comic Con 2013

 Matt and Kimber at NYCC 2013.

 An artist at work.

 Cosplay: Gollum from Lord of the Rings.

 Cosplay: Kaylee from Firefly.

Getting panned by the Demo Man.

 Matt's friend Colin. Horns!

Kimber Streams. Kitty ears!

Portraits by Sam Castro

At work in the Gallery, Spring 2013.

New Art Installations at UNI

Photo by Pat Beck

Installing Peter Drake's Shell-Shock in Redeker Center at UNI, an Iowa Art in State Buildings project purchase.

 Photo by Pat Beck

 Complete! Me to the left, Diane Morris and Peter Colver to the right.

An installation view of Myth & Narrative: It's All in the Telling, a UNI Permanent Art Collection exhibition co-curated with my buddy Dr. Charles Adelman. The two standing works are centuries-old vellum leaves. The one to the left is a partially finished Gregorian chant, and the one to the right is a page from the bible in the chapter Exodus. The Morris/Colver team formatted them this past summer.

Newly formatted UNI Collection works installed on the main floor of Seerley Hall at the request of the new UNI President. To the left is a David Delafield print, and to the right through the opening is a large painting by Michael Boyd.

A view at the opposite end (south) of Seerley Hall's main floor. To the left is a large painting by Michael Boyd, and to the left is a print by Robert Riseling.

The great halls of the University of Northern Iowa are brightening up each passing day!

Contraltos of the Great American Songbook

Sarah Vaughan, "Tenderly"

Rosemary Clooney "You Didn't Do Right by Me"

Toni Tennille, "More Than You Know"

Doris Day, "Autumn Leaves"

Judy Garland, "The Man That Got Away"

Ella Fitzgerald "Someone to Watch Over Me"

Peggy Lee, "When the World Was Young"

Eydie Gorme, "My Funny Valentine"

Billie Holiday, "Embraceable You"

Anita O'Day, "Body and Soul"

My brothers

(l-r) Darrell and Troy Taylor,

Chip and GR Briggs.

On the occasion of Bill Briggs' passing,

Clay City/Brazil/West Lafayette, Indiana,

summer 2013.

XO

We're friendly at the Iowa Irish Fest, no?

Iowa Irish Fest 2013 in Waterloo!

At the "Lucky" 7th Annual Iowa Irish Fest in Waterloo, Iowa!

 Beautiful Bev and Kilt Inspector Mark in front of the Park Avenue stage.

 Bev McCusker talking to the best - and handsomest - Irish band Scythian after an exciting and athletic performance on August 2nd.

 Me and Mark.

Bev and her buddies, Kris and Dottie.

Fun was had by all!

Vocal Jazz Gems

 Manhattan Transfer

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

Capim

Skyliner

Why Not!

Airegin

The Night that Monk Returned to Heaven

Sassy (as performed by Finnish singers Club for Five)

Rare Silk

Round Midnight (compare to Manhattan Transfer's "The Night that Monk Returned to Heaven") 

 Automatic Girl

Storm 

Watch What Happens 

How Can I Be Sure? 

Lush Life 

I've loved these songs, and especially these vocal arrangements, for decades now. Listening to them brings back such happy memories. Enjoy!

Hudson and Whiting at Faulconer Gallery

 A particularly magnificent detail of Scott Robert Hudson's Wild Horses.

 An installation view of Wild Horses, possibly a companion piece to his 2007 installation at the UNI Gallery of Art, which was titled Bison.

 Another detail of Hudson's Wild Horses.

Yesterday, I made a road trip to Grinnell, Iowa to see the latest work by my colleagues/friends Scott Robert Hudson and Margaret Whiting. It was a beautiful summer day and the right opportunity to once again engage in the ideas they consistently espouse - human interaction with wildlife and landscape as well as human cultural clashes that have impacted social development through the ages.

Hudson states that this latest installation is about "the socio-ecology of the North American wild horse herds, the atmospherics of the Paleolithic caves of Southern France, and the human drama of the Ghost Dance." Whiting says her exhibition addresses "deforestation and the ways human laws help and hinder environmental protection, the connections between human health and the land, and the patterns and systems that connect us all." Each presentation is distinct but together in the same space they create a rousing dialogue about authority, influence, and enterprise. The Great Themes!

Hudson's Wild Horses, Whiting's Environmental Concerns, and Lorna Bieber's From a Distance run through Sept. 8, 2013 at the lovely Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa.

 An installation view of Deforestation, which is an iteration of a piece presented in 2011 at the UNI Gallery of Art in a group invitational exhibition titled What You Will.

A Whiting collage.

Feature on UNI website

Here's the link to a feature about me posted on the University of Northern Iowa website. Student Steven Sanchez of UNI Proud interviewed me during the spring 2013 semester just prior to some really fabulous campus LGBT programming that he helped to organize.

http://www.uni.edu/resources/features/staff-you-should-know-darrell-taylor

A couple of exquisite Rameau productions

Photo from the Lokomobilaeu homepage

 This Paris production of Jean-Philippe Rameau's "Les Paladins" includes the lithe Topi Lehtipuu and the rubbery Laurent Naouri as well as hip-hop dancers and fantastical video projections. It's absolutely a joy to watch from start to finish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiaoZgGrsik

Photo by Agathe Poupeney

This Rameau production of "Hippolyte et Aricie" looks nostalgically Baroque. The dancing is beautiful, the cast's posture perfect, and the singing so very beautiful. Also, I highly recommend the June 2012 New York Times review of this show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_KDx_0oxo0

Lehtipuu and Hvorostovsky

Topi Lehtipuu

Image from Bach Cantatas website

Finnish lyric tenor Topi Lehtipuu as Ferrando singing "Un'aura amorosa" from Mozart's Così fan tutte. Mr. Lehtipuu is perhaps the best singing actor on stage today. When he swoons about his love during this aria, you want to swoon too. Warm voice, piercing eyes, trim, and intense. A new favorite for me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilD7XMEuq-M

Dmitri Hvorostovsky

Image from LA Opera website

Russian (Siberian) baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Hérode singing "Vision Fugitive" from Massenet's Herodiade. One of my favorite arias sung by the silver fox himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZkmuJbr7Vs

Recent Curation and Exhibition Design

 Developing Expressions exhibition (K-12 from area schools) at the Hearst Center for the Arts, Cedar Falls, IA.

 Another view of Developing Expressions. This has been an immensely gratifying project for me and is the third children's art exhibition I've designed and installed since 2006.

 An installation view of the 2013 Annual Juried Student Art Exhibition at the UNI Gallery of Art, which was juried by Memphis College of Art professor Fred Burton.

 The Individual Is the One Illusion, an exhibition I curated from the UNI Permanent Art Collection. Students in Dr. Elizabeth Sutton's Art and Globalization seminar provided the didactics.

An installation view of The Individual is the One Illusion featuring sculptures by Jose de Creeft (foreground) and Arturo Herrera (background). To the left is a painting by Dana Saulnier of Ohio, which was part of the Gallery's ambitious painting exhibition that ran from January through early March 2013. It was titled REVERB: Recent Abstraction in Painting and featured eight artists from across the country who push the formal boundaries of abstraction.