Signals (Catch and Release) asks how the valuation of resources influences our perception of nature and at what cost. The conceptual framework and resultant sculptures for this exhibition were largely dictated by time spent in residence at RAIR (Recycling Artist In Residence) in August and September. The great fallacy of trash is that it is prophetic in nature, presenting itself to us in a course of preordained events. This exhibition proposes otherwise, that trash can be an accurate gauge of a culture’s shifting value systems and can be traced back not only to its origin of extraction but to modern society’s predominant Judeo-Christian beliefs. The show title borrows from the term used in recreational fishing to describe a method of capturing, assessing, and releasing images and objects back to the world. Items collected and altered from the recycling center such as silver insulation, grass seed and a hurricane lamp come back together to tell a story of the human pursuit of comfort and control.

Kristen Neville Taylor’s diverse practice combines drawing, sculpture, and glass which converge playfully in installation style environments. Her work considers nature futures and histories through science, anthropology, science fiction, and mythology. Taylor’s work has been shown at Little Berlin, Bunker Hull and the Philadelphia Art Alliance in Philadelphia, PNCA, Richard Stockton and Rowan University Art Galleries in New Jersey, and Expo Chicago. She has organized several exhibitions including Landscape Techne at Little Berlin, The Usable Earth at the Esther Klein Gallery, and she co-curated Middle of Nowhere in the Pine Barrens. Taylor is the recipient of the Laurie Wagman Prize in Glass, the Jack Malis Scholarship, and a 2017 Vermont Studio Center Fellowship.