Chris Taylor's Land Art shapes the world around him

Chris Taylor is proud of his upbringing in the north Georgia mountains and his family's Appalachian heritage, a sentiment he expresses through environmental art pieces he creates and showcases through 34 Degrees North, his land art photography outlet.

Land Art challenges artists to use only natural materials available in the environment around them, he explained. It was a task he was drawn to in light of his childhood days playing along riverbanks and creating structures out of sticks, rocks and other raw materials.

"We lived in the middle of nowhere and there wasn't a lot to do, but there was a mountain and a creek and wide open spaces. I naturally played with whatever was around me," said Taylor, who works as the art director in the Office of Marketing and Communications at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business.

Taylor began experimenting with land art two years ago after watching the documentary "Rivers and Tides," a film featuring land artist Andy Goldsworthy who creates sculptures from elements found in nature. The documentary not only sparked nostalgic memories from Taylor's childhood, it legitimized his view of nature as an art form and the way he viewed the world, he said.

In the beginning, Taylor made simple pieces in his backyard. Now, he looks for land art opportunities everywhere he goes from walking trails at Bear Hollow Zoo and Sandy Creek Nature Center to the area outside of his office at UGA and while on vacation at Lake Herrick and the beach.

Taylor has steadily received notice for his land art photography over the last two years, beginning with a photo he posted last spring of wisteria flowers flowing down stone steps in his backyard and progressing to an art installation at Hendershot's Coffee Bar this September. Two of his photographs were accepted into the juried art show "Natural Expressions" earlier this month.

"It was the first time my work has been on a wall in a gallery. It was exciting to see," Taylor said of the art show.

This month Taylor also traveled to Pine Lake, a neighborhood in Decatur, to participate in a two-day festival where he sold multiple prints and one framed piece.

"Everyone wants to be validated and the fact that people have responded positively to what I'm doing and think it's good is a great feeling," he said.

As far as Taylor knows, he's one of the few artists in the southeast to create land art and the only one in Athens.

Taylor has fine tuned his aesthetic, infusing the rustic influences of Appalachia into creations that include jagged angels, damp environments, stones, dead tree limbs, moss, creeks, salamanders and elements such as fog, wind and rain.

"I do a lot of trails too because there are no straight lines in nature," he added. "I also think the letter "S" is a beautiful shape, so I use that a lot in my designs."

But in the end, Taylor said he enjoys doing land art just for the fun of it.

"I think people forget to have fun when they create art," he said. "I recently started (teaching land art) to school aged children because they genuinely find joy in it, something that doesn't always happen with adults. They don't ask why they are lining up sticks a certain way or question why they are creating something out of leaves. Once they get over the technicality of it they just have fun. That's the point of any art form I think."

See a slideshow of his work here.

Follow features reporter April Burkhart at www.facebook.com/AprilBurkhartABH.