This feature was conceived as a foray into the hearts/minds of Kenyon’s finest artists through the pages of their sketchbooks. This week, we talk with Taylor Sweeney ’15.

Taylor Sweeny ’15 grew up in an unsuspectingly rich-in-art Pittsburgh, but he didn’t find his passion for sculpture until his Sophomore year at Kenyon. He was raised with a respect for art, as he grew up roaming the halls of the Andy Warhol Museum and those like it. His art is “minimalist-inspired,” and he mainly tries to explore setting bounds and “deriving creativity out of his restrictions.” He prefers using wood, steel, and concrete and justifies his partiality to these materials, as they are accessible and easily formed. Throughout his time at Kenyon, Taylor has developed a particular style that mainly revolves around the “aesthetic of functionality.”

Taylor has not only developed his style, but he’s finely tuned his approach to his art. He acknowledges that in the beginning, he was purposefully “making things look like they were the art,” that is to say they were “impressive, clean, and polished.” Through his various experiences on campus in Gambier and studying abroad in Munich, he now focuses on how his pieces interact with and are perceived by his audience and the space.

Taylor’s sketchbook is densely packed with scribbles, notes, and measurement plans. While he claims that the images depicted on his pages are not accurate representations of what appears in his head, his sketches are made for logistical reasons. His sculptures are always a precise depiction of the ideas in his mind. While Taylor claims that his drawings aren’t “good,” they’re undeniably his own. They’re scattered and various, but they are genuine. A line he scribbled into the corner of his sketchbook best describes Taylor’s continuous pursuit of creating art: “make it REALLY SOMETHING.” He certainly is.

You can see more of Taylor’s work at taylorsweeney.net.