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April 25, 2004, By Kurt
Shaw
If you are familiar at all with the legend of the Flying Dutchman,
the ship that was doomed to sail around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope forever
after it sank in 1641 due to a fierce storm, then John
Taylor's "Ghost Ships" are sure to send chills down your spine.
Alhough Taylor's ships, on view in the exhibition "Four
Galleries Four Artists" at Michael Berger Gallery in East Liberty, are
not as old as Captain van der Decken's legendary vessel, they are most certainly
the stuff of legend. Using old postcards and photographs as reference, Taylor
builds re-creations of historic vessels that look as if they've been brought
up from the very depths that entomb some of them.
For example, Taylor's version of the USS
John D. Ford bears the distinct green patina of a buried penny. Alhough
the destroyer was sold for scrap two years after the end of World War II,
Taylor has re-created it to look as though it has been resting at the bottom
of Manila Bay for decades, even if it is just over four feet long.
That aged look, says gallery owner Michael Berger, is due in
part to the fact that Taylor makes his ships out of detritus -- bits and pieces
that he finds either on the beaches or roadsides near his San Juan Capistrano
home such as bent windshield wipers, rusty pipes and warped boards. "He
said to me, 'It's great if it's been run over by a car, but it's even better
if it's been run over twice," Berger says.
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