Meet Taylor McArthur, a talented digital artist with a passion for 3D environments and scenes. Taylor has honed her skills in graphic design, coding, video editing and 2D animation to create stunning works of art that create new worlds from scratch. Her practice is informed by Indigenous Futurisms and seeks to situate her Indigenous culture within both the modern and a potential future vision.
Taylor has always had a love for art and spent time in her childhood daydreaming and doodling. Later, she attended the Assiniboine Community College in Brandon, MB where she learned about the world of 3D art- and something clicked. Her spatial mind found that working in the 3D world came naturally.
You can see this spatial skill come to life when Taylor explains her creative process. She starts by jotting down a list of feelings associated with the environment she wants to create and imagines how that might appear. This could look like incorporating elements such as colours, dust/particles, and water – then naming the feelings that space evokes.
You can see this spatial skill come to life when Taylor explains her creative process. She starts by jotting down a list of feelings associated with the environment she wants to create and imagines how that might appear. This could look like incorporating elements such as colours, dust/particles, and water – then naming the feelings that space evokes.
According to Taylor, “It’s an artist’s job to look at something and see how they can bring it to life or add their unique take and vision of the outcome.” To create new and interesting visual worlds Taylor seeks inspiration from a variety of sources. She has a fascination with sci-fi and space and is often inspired by movies in this genre. She also finds inspiration in instrumental music, particularly that of M83, which gives her a feeling of exploring and travelling to distant lands.
One of Taylor’s favourite projects was Azimuth Nithehi, a collaboration with her friend and co-worker Dallas Flett-Wapash. The project, commissioned by VideoPool, was an opportunity for the duo to explore the relationship between human connection and technology. The project involved a large-scale interactive installation where users entered their heart rates. The space took in each person’s data, combining them to create the average or median heart rate. In the physical space, you could see and hear the collaborative heart rate increase or decrease as different people entered or exited the installation.
For her piece The Space Between in Lights on the Exchange, she explored the concept of parallel lives/realities and the strange familiarity of dreams. Taylor believes, “that dreams bind us and also serve as a plane of existence that allows us to build deeper connections within ourselves.” Her installation represents five different realities that reflect certain points in her life. The projections are windows to the reality that certain feelings and thoughts create.
You can check out her installation The Space Between at 168 Bannatyne Ave.
Or see more of Taylor’s work here:
IG: @tmcarthurart
Twitter: @tmcarthurs_
Welcome jaymez, a talented visual artist and designer born and raised in Winnipeg. Jaymez has always felt drawn and dedicated himself to working in the field professionally after obtaining a Bachelor of Fine Arts in video and film from the University of Manitoba. Jaymez has spent years immersing himself in the art world, working mainly in theatre and live performance. He has a passion for projection, lighting, and sound and is known for his large-scale outdoor projections that are both visually stunning and thought-provoking.
When asked about his creative process, jaymez laid it out bare, stating it’s, “A mix of stress, anxiety, doom-scrolling, and procrastination mixed with long days and nights.” He lets himself get lost in his work, truly immersing himself in the process. He finds inspiration from a variety of sources, including cold winters, prairie skies, urban decay, shadows on concrete, and sleepless nights. He is also inspired by a diverse range of artists, activists, and anarchists, and uses music, film, literature, and even AI art generators for a spark of inspiration.
Jaymez loves working on large-scale projections and any project that allows him to travel and experience new places. Right now, he’s excited about designing for the play A Wrinkle in Time for the Stratford Festival in May. He’s also working with a team on remounting Empreinte(s) at Theatre Circle Moliere – a play which they developed in Conakry, Guinea (West Africa) which opens on March 10th.
For the Lights on the Exchange festival, Jaymez has created a piece called Kong + Bannatyne, which explores two of Winnipeg’s urban legends and myths through the lens of old 8-bit video games. The piece consists of two works, Purple City and Ghost Street, both of which are projection-mapped onto the building where the restaurant King + Bannatyne is located. Purple City is based on an old urban legend that if you consume magic mushrooms and stare into the lights at the Legislature, the city will turn purple. Ghost Street is about the ghosts that haunt the city, from the Fort Garry Hotel to the old Mother Tucker’s Restaurants- and the ghosts that haunt us symbolically. Jaymez wanted to pay homage to, “These ghosts that follow us around and are constant reminders of the past – something we love to hold onto”. It’s also about navigating confusing Winnipeg streets.
Jaymez feels a connection to the Exchange District and has a deep appreciation for its unique pulse. He is grateful to Julie and the team at Manufacturing Entertainment for the opportunity to be a part of this festival and is happy to be bringing some vibrance to the cold Winnipeg winter nights.
You can check out his piece Kong + Bannatyne in the parking lot at King + Bannatyne.
If you’re interested in seeing more of Jaymez’s work, you can find him on:
Instagram: @if_it_moves
Twitter: @jaymez_13.
