Tayler Ayers, unequivocally

Tayler Ayers (M.A. creative business leadership; B.F.A., fibers, 2019) is a SCAD tennis standout and, with Will Penny, one of the artists of the BLACK LIVES MATTER murals atop student residence hall FORTY in Atlanta and the exterior of Gutstein Gallery in Savannah.

“Our project speaks to the injustice that is present in the world, while also contemplating what it looks like when two people who are visually different come together to contribute to something larger than themselves,” the artists said.

What Ayers and Penny (M.F.A., painting, 2013; B.F.A., painting, 2008) have created is part of the fabric of the Civil Rights movement in Savannah, the mural stretching across the front of the former Levy’s department store (now SCAD’s Jen Library) that saw the lunch-counter sit-in of 1960. Ayers, from Carrollton, Georgia, says: “To put this message on the outside of a building in the South, this is bigger than me, and bigger than SCAD. I’m excited for the response, whatever that may be.”

Tayler Ayers:

I gravitate toward flowy yet refined hand styles. You look at the Black Live Matter piece and think, is it painted, or made with a Wacom? I painted it with a paintbrush, then used Image Trace so it had that mix of professionalism and clean design, to keep the organic feeling.

I grew up traveling on I-20 West in and out of Atlanta to play tennis, through that part of Atlanta where SCAD is, so I’ve seen SCAD Atlanta since I was ten years old. On the tennis team at SCAD, my teammates come to me to talk, to unpack things they’re thinking about. Often a Black person walking by will see me and say, “Young Arthur Ashe!” That’s their association. There are not a lot of people who look like me playing tennis. When we’re traveling for matches, I’ll sometimes be the only Black player on my team and the opposing team. I own that. I have a higher level of awareness in that position.

My success in tennis was never measured in trophies. What I got from tennis is that it gave me confidence and independence from a young age. If I’m approaching an art piece, sometimes I’ll get asked “How do you start? How do you have the confidence to make those marks unapologetically?” Well, it comes from being on a tennis court, alone, it’s you and you lose or you win. In a millisecond, you have to dissect a thousand options that are point-one-percent worse or better than the other, and you have to have the awareness and critical thinking to break down that situation and make a decision. I apply that to art.

I’m doing this to speak to kids to let them know they can do this. Everything I make, you can make with what you can buy at Starlandia or Blick. I’ll go with you to pick out the art supplies. I’m not sitting behind a veil. My work is on a building. I’m going for it.

By Peter Relic