Sally Taylor carries a small open box under her arm. She catches her breath, thankful to escape the traffic of Main street in Vineyard Haven. She walks into Midnight Farm, heads up the stairs to the second floor, and weaves through a maze of mirrors, guitars and artwork. Floodlights illuminate names such as Jimmy Buffett and her parents, James Taylor and Carly Simon.
What many call an artistic treasure chest, Ms. Taylor simply names Consenses. Better yet, just another day at work.
Sally Taylor’s Consenses art exhibit debuted on the Vineyard in the summer of 2014. That exhibit was a three day event held at the Grange Hall in West Tisbury. This year the exhibit reopened on July 1 in a more permanent space at Midnight Farm in Vineyard Haven.
The art project is the result of years of effort. In fact, its roots trace back to the diagnosis of a 10 year old.
“I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was 10 years old,” said Ms. Taylor. “It came with this recognition that I was not really going to understand the world as other people would and I felt isolated and lonely because of that.”
Ms. Taylor said she sought solace in art as a mode of expression, using music as her platform of choice. She performed and produced albums but eventually ran into those familiar feelings of isolation and loneliness while touring on the road. She kept remembering an old fable echoing from her anthropology studies.
“These blind men come upon an elephant while they are walking through the jungle and, each have the chance to feel a different part of the elephant’s body before they conclude best what an elephant is,” she explained. “The one man who feels the elephant’s tail thinks the elephant is a rope and the one who feels the ear thinks that it’s a fan and soon. Each of the men feeling a different part argues for their truth of what an elephant is until this king comes and lets them know that each man felt a different essence of the larger animal.”
Ms. Taylor wanted to create an “elephant” of her own understanding. For her, that meant a place of nature, space and timelessness. This could only mean one place: Martha’s Vineyard.
“Martha’s Vineyard is where I identify as home,” she said. “I had my son here. I spent many winters here. I love the landscape and the knowing that there’s a timeless feeling of nature existing here.”
Starting with 22 images that represent different angles of Martha’s Vineyard, she gave each image to a different musician. Without telling them what the images meant she asked a simple question, “What does this mean to you?”
Within a week each musician created a song and submitted it to Ms. Taylor. She then gave the songs to painters, asking them the same question. Another week passed. She received the paintings, and from there, the process continued with a sculptor and perfume artist, each asked that single question. It ended with a set designer uniting each art piece in a space according to their vision.
“I was literally using each of the artists as a medium through which they served as a master of one sense,” she said. “The artist serves as master of vision, the musician that of audio and so forth.”
More than 150 artists later, a single exhibit remains offering a message larger than its parts.
“Each of us gets to touch a tiny sliver of space and time while we’re on this planet,” Ms. Taylor said. “Armed with just a sliver, just like the blind men, we think we understand much more of the whole and go about befriending those who agree with us when so much more could be understood if we just had the capacity to show and listen to one another’s perspectives.”
Consenses is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day at Midnight Farm located at 44 Main street, Vineyard Haven. The exhibit is free but a suggested donation of $12 helps fund the Consenses project. Visit consenses.org.
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