BIO

Taylor Lee (b. 1991, she/they) is a queer artist and writer whose practice operates at the intersection of memoir and ethnographic research. Working across sculpture and installation that are heavily grounded in text and craft, Lee examines grief, addiction, and the construction of identity within American cultural landscapes. Their work is often immersive and participatory, unfolding through relational aesthetics that prioritize shared experience, humor, obsessive detail, and abjection as strategies for documenting lived experience. Recent projects include BORN TO RUN, an installation staged inside a U-Haul cargo van that functioned simultaneously as an homage to American road-trip culture and a eulogy for their marriage, confronting the absurdities embedded in survival.

Lee’s work has been exhibited nationally at venues including Hashimoto Contemporary, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Wassaic Project, Collar Works, Standard Space, Redux Contemporary, and McColl Center, among others. In 2023, Lee presented the solo exhibition YARD SALE at SPRING/BREAK Art Show LA, curated by Janet Loren Hill and Jonell Logan, earning the fair’s first and only Single/Palm Award for Best Curation. 

Lee’s work has been written about in The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artnet, Juxtapoz,Vogue, Oprah Daily, Nylon, Boston Art Review, and The Jealous Curator, among other publications. In addition to their exhibition practice, Lee has contributed to popular culture through sculptural work, including creating papier-mâché heads for Bowen Yang for the feature film Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain (directed by Paul Briganti and produced by Judd Apatow).

Lee is also an active educator, curator, and public speaker, with experience leading workshops, artist talks, and panel discussions centered on material experimentation, accessibility, and mental health in creative practice. They have taught drawing, painting, and ceramic sculpture through the Young Artist Studio Series and Artist Studio Series at McColl Center, where they have also presented artist talks and facilitated hands-on workshops. In 2021, Lee curated American Honey, McColl Center’s first exhibition featuring an entirely queer roster of artists. Lee has participated as a panelist and speaker for institutions and platforms including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Podcast Movement, the Enneagram Summit, Honeybook and Rising Tide Society, and community-based organizations across the U.S., and has collaborated on accessible art kits and virtual workshops aimed at expanding creative engagement beyond traditional art spaces.

Lee holds a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Lee is currently based in Charlotte, NC, working primarily out of McColl Center.

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All inquiries can be made via hello@taylorleenicholson.com.

Artist Statement

I am always circling the same themes, the same habits, the same objects—rearranging them, remaking them, never fully moving on. My work is an exploration of cycles: the ones we choose, the ones we inherit, the ones we struggle to break. Through sculpture and installation, I trace the patterns that shape a life—grief and recovery, function and failure, transformation and stasis. Objects anchor these cycles. A wheel-thrown vessel, spun into existence, collapses under its own weight. A mop bucket sits in the corner, waiting to be used, emptied, used again. A crumpled fast-food wrapper lingers longer than the meal it once contained. I collect these moments of repetition and disposability, rendering them permanent in an effort to make sense of them.

Much of my work reflects the Everyday—the remnants of cheap meals, the refuse of road trips, the detritus of maintenance and survival. These things tell stories, even if we try to throw them away. In past work, I mapped grief through the vast, unending landscapes of the American West, the “road trip” an odyssey of both freedom and entrapment. The mess in the car—the receipts, the crushed cans, the piss-filled Gatorade bottles—became the real souvenirs, proof of movement, but also of stagnation. The journey is never really over.

Now, I look at the mechanics of change—how transformation is never clean, how growth is never linear. In my BUMMERS ceramic series, vessels are thrown, bisqued, glazed—some emerge functional, others fail. Some hold water; some crack. I incorporate digital artifacts like text messages and push notifications—echoes of past selves, repeated conversations, evidence of what is said and unsaid. The line between function and dysfunction is thin, both in my work and in my life.

Beyond vessels, I build sculptural tableaux that reflect the tension of cycles—cleaning products arranged like relics, objects of maintenance both literal and metaphorical. Getting Clean becomes a layered phrase: a ritual of labor, of sobriety, of control. But disorder is inevitable. The bottle spills, the saltine crumbles, the vessel collapses. Even in the attempt to create order, entropy creeps in.

At its core, my work asks: What if I can’t escape my cycles, of work, of addiction, of memory? I don’t have an answer, but I document the question. My practice is about repetition, about effort. I keep making, keep throwing, keep moving, even if I’m circling the same drain I’ve always circled. Maybe the cycle itself is the story. Maybe that’s enough.