Artist-in-Residence Camilla Taylor focused their residency on a series of drawings referring to the myth of St. Mary of Egypt. She is depicted covered in her own hair, the only thing left her after decades of an ascetic life wandering through the desert. Presumably, even her clothes disintegrated. Rather than decades, Taylor lost nearly everything in mere moments. All their artwork and possessions at their Altadena home and studio were destroyed in the Eaton Fire of 2025. They recently curated the group exhibit "My House Burned Down" at the Track 16 Gallery in Downtown LA, which closed in June, 2025, and in a solo exhibition and catalog at Track 16 Gallery in East Hollywood, "Unkindness," that dealt with themes of atheist mysticism, which closed in January, 2026.

"This loss and displacement changed the way I make art," Taylor says. “My work became more fragile and more precious.” However, hair is a theme they've used often as a motif in their work. It is a symbol of the body and a material that is both deeply corporeal and also has near magical qualities in many cultures, controlled in how it's cut and worn and revealed. Taylor references hair also as a symbol of femininity, and their own ambivalence towards it. This will be explored in drawings, prints, and sculptures referring back to the myth of St. Mary of Egypt, and the larger corporeal and quasi magical qualities that hair represents.

Biography:
Camilla Taylor (CA) was raised in Provo, Utah, and is based in Los Angeles, California. In 2025, they presented Unkindness at Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles, an exhibition examining mystical transformation through destruction. The exhibition included a sculpture that survived the complete burning of Taylor’s home and studio in the Eaton Fire earlier that year, embedding material endurance and change directly into the work. That same year, Taylor was a ceramic artist in residence at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Residency and was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Artist Fellowship.

Working across glass, printmaking, metal, fabric, and other materials, Taylor’s practice investigates interiority, the uncanny. The mortal body recurs as a central motif, explored both as a literal form and as a site of seduction and repulsion. Works such as Unrelenting, a cast glass sculpture depicting a human foot subjected to the forces of frostbite, reflect Taylor’s interest in vulnerability, endurance, and the thresholds where the body and mind transform under pressure.

Taylor has been on faculty at UCLA and Occidental College, teaching sculpture, drawing, and printmaking.