Taylor Triano
Fiber Artist
I was first introduced to Taylor Triano by a mutual friend back in the 00’s, as twenty-somethings in the KC art and indie scene. Her rad tats, killer style and cunning sense of humor earned her instant street cred, and as a model and scenester she became an icon of cool and muse for local artists and musicians. As I got to know her better, not only did I admire her personality, I realized that she is a damn fine artist in her own right, with enviable work ethic, vision, and drive. She creates, performs, and categorically rebels against the status quo in both her art and her life. Taylor Triano is legit.
The 10-foot tall hand-painted canvas banner for El Gold will hang at the stairway landing leading down into the lower level saloon at Hotel Kansas City. The pattern was inspired by an air register in the historic building.
Taylor shares a sunlit studio space in the Bauer arts building with three other women; her corner defined by an American flag, bull skulls, orderly stacks of fabric, her industrial Juki sewing machine, and past and present projects such as small flags she made for Boulevardia 2017 of the slogan “Stay Greasy, Keep it Sleazy;” her joie de vivre loud and proud. The Bauer houses 27 art studios, a variety of businesses, and an event space, which sounds like a recipe for distraction, but Taylor loves having her studio here. “I work in such a solitary way, being a one woman business, that it’s nice to have the other energy around me and other people in the space.” Taylor utilizes the hallway and other shared building spaces for working on large-scale projects, and others do the same. They encourage and rally each other on, just as the building owner does as a sort of mentor figurehead, celebrating each other’s successes and creating a hive energy that the artists harness as momentum to propel their ideas into action.
Taylor’s work table is one of the few necessities she requires in her studio space…and bigger is better as her work continues to grow in scale and volume.
Taylor is a fiber artist and she is a hustler. When COVID put a halt to most of the work she had slated for 2020, Taylor decided to make some face masks to donate to health care workers. Her Instagram post snowballed into launching a new mask making business venture. Of course, she wanted to distinguish herself from her competition, and as a fabricator she wanted to perfect the fit. Fitting all face sizes was a challenge, so her differentiator became customization: head straps or ear straps, pocket filter or no insert, nose guard or no wire. “Everything had to happen so fast, because people were, like, freaking out” Taylor reflects, and after two months of working 12-hour days on a one-woman production line to make 500 masks, she had about all she could take. “It came with a lot of responsibility and I was just being drained…it was insane.”
Hand-made pennants with appliqued letters and wayfinding directions for Hotel Kansas City, The Town Co (hotel restaurant), and el Gold (hotel saloon), opening October 2020.
Right around this time Taylor landed a commission for the new Hotel Kansas City, a century-old hotel renovation into a hyper-local, upscale, boutique hotel (opening in October), fluidly transitioning from solo crisis response to the commercial hospitality world, the Hyatt being her biggest-to-date client. Taylor’s scope of custom design and fabrication for the hotel, hotel restaurant, and bar includes: exterior banner signs, a 10-ft painted wall hanging for a stairway leading to the lower level saloon, stitched watercolor portraits, vintage looking American flag buntings, entryway signage, and bandannas for restaurant waitstaff uniforms. With the developers based in Chicago, project designers in New York, and local chef-partner Patrick Ryan, Taylor needed to evolve her design process to rely primarily on remote presentations of her concepts. “With the downtime between the masks end and hotel project beginning, I had a goal of learning Illustrator. Photoshop and Illustrator are tools I wasn’t taught with a Textile Design degree so a good friend of mine was nice enough to give me a crash course. Having a complete design prior to beginning projects with clients has always been important to me and as my projects and clients get bigger it’s crucial that I can provide a professional 2-dimensional version of the vision. And I really enjoy the design process just as much as the execution.” This additional design step also helps with the overall project organization and flow. “I like to be organized while I make the mess that I’m doing,” she says, and organization is mental as much as it is physical.
Taylor utilizes Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to help develop her designs and then communicate her ideas to her clients, which has become essential in the remote reality of pandemic work.
To keep mentally balanced, Taylor runs. Similar to her approach to her career, Taylor is devoted and persistent when it comes to fitness and well-being. “I’m hard headed and strong-willed. Running is a way for me to really check my mental health and my anxiety and depression which I struggle with. I love running to just zone out for an hour and be in my own head.” And from the conversation we had, she seems as balanced and badass as one could hope to be. “I feel really lucky,” she notes in comparison to the state of the nation, “as doomsday as the rest of the year seems, I feel like there’s some sort of exciting shift in the way that everyone is going to think, and work, and live, in the future when we come out of this.”
Taylor stitches hand-cut canvas letters onto the el Gold saloon pennant using her Juki industrial sewing machine.
Taylor’s optimism and authenticity inspire me, her renegade approach to life rooted in kindness and compassion, not anger. “I’ve always imagined the work that I put out in the world is a tree branch and that branch grows new branches and so on,” Taylor states. Whether making art, performing, or just forging her own path, it is no doubt that Taylor will continue to create and inspire others, as she matures and flourishes.
