Cedric Tai

"Weekly Casual Co-Art Making Time/Space", Every Thursday 7-8 pm (PST)

"@FakingProfessionalism" at the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University, 2023

Marcus Herse invited me to exhibit my work on neurodivergence to coincide with a new Health + Humanities minor. It featured 5 distinct installations including in-process works: color charts, a hands-on station of lit up glass tiles, a modular mini-golf course, and visitors could engage with an evolving mockup AR "Neurospectrum In-Take Form." That part (seen in a smartphone screenshot) was a playful comprehensive interactive AR experience to de-stigmatize mental health, and recognize varying ways of navigating the world.

As opposed to intake forms for a pathological diagnosis, this generates a 3D model of your neurotype, an insight into how you experience just being yourself within a particular environment. The visualization is a spectrum of color slices you carve away, each detailing a range of lived experiences where edges represent severity of symptoms of disability to the center core being more gray due to effective accommodations (the colored squares up top) to expending a lot of energy masking (the colored squares towards bottom).

"Glass Material Library" (2021-2023)

I attempted to represent 'neurodiversity' in glass and made 50+ test tiles at the Yucca Valley Material Lab. Glass is nearly infinitely manipulatable. Although some of the experimental combinations are unstable and not allowed in commercial kilns, I detailed how anyone can reproduce each tile; ironically creating a very practical guide for some very unconventional ways of working with glass.

I was hoping to demystify the kiln glass alchemy and to encourage other curious artists to experiment with it by focusing on what transforms/reacts, including representations of my body (including skin tone), and what must be setup in the kiln to maintain certain forms. I also wanted to be transparent about the total costs of this medium, so I created comprehensive documentation and put it online (on instagram and on my website).

I also presented a comprehensive overview of my experiments in an interactive, light-up display and set it up in libraries and educational spaces to encourage an abundance of ways to make things accessibile. Making the invisible visible is a celebration of the full spectrum of this medium and our minds.

Below is an image of me taking this setup and incorporating it into my exhibition '@fakingprofessionalism' where I updated this with new fired glass work, and had a student graphic designer make bookmark takeaways that included the details of how to make each glass tile. (Credit to the photo above, Jesse Egner and the photo below, Timo Ohler.)

''The Speed of Learning'' (2012 - ongoing)

An on-going series of handmade books that are also little kinetic archives. The title references my conviction for revising American education to stress tests less and place more importance on fostering intrinsic learning, one student at a time.

This edition was made for Chido Johnson's travelling project/installation ''Let's Talk About Love, Baby'' so I embossed the spine with another context.

Artists include: Corrie Baldauf, Olayami Dabls, Bryce Detroit, Michaela Mosher, Andrew Thompson, Graem Whyte as well as Lynn Crawford. Assistant Curator: Anna Tüdős

''Over Over Over'' (Phase 2, 2017)

OverOverOver began as a modest attempt to bring artists from Glasgow to Detroit in 2015. Phase 2 of the project is based on Detroit artists visiting the city of Glasgow during May 2018. After being informed about the Scottish city through texts, anecdotes and websites, their presence will result in not just a presentation of their individual practices and ideas, but also an exchange of artists strategies. (2015 - 2018)

''DIY Modular Gallery'' (Amateur Strategies) (2016)

5 custom separate modular walls (which can also be turned into tables) and 1 'wood suit' made up of the offcuts from producing the work. All has been donated to the students and the woodwork design relates directly to the design of the windows and that space.

This solo exhibition took place in the Kerckhoff Gallery of UCLA as custom built walls that could be used by the students to put on their own exhibitions and workshops concurrently.

The structure was built to be taken down and put back up in different orientations. The idea came from the conflict of UCLA students being given a space for all students to use, and the inability to make holes in the walls, which limited the kinds of installations that could take place in the historically protected venue.

''Go on Vacation, Rearrange the Furniture'' (2013)

During my MFA degree show opening at the Glasgow School of Art, I secretly planted small works of art on unsuspecting visitors. Using the artwork composed of tile arrangements to keep their attention, myself and a team of trained volunteers planted small tile pieces on visitors through a process I call reverse pick-pocketing.

''Brixels'' (2010 - ongoing)

A mashup of the words brick and pixel, "Brixels" originated as an exploration of participation within public art. The website MakeBrixels.com was co-created with Dan Marchwinsky to assist in generating designs and to allow others to access the patterns. Brixels are an instantaneous, interactive paint-by-numbers kind of activity for an existing community that seeks an accessible way to reclaim ownership of a space. By calling attention to the bricks that make up the walls rather than utilizing the whole wall as a 'blank canvas' it brought up communal conversations about permission, skill, and the relationship between branding and a sense of place.

The image above is a mural on Transmat in Detroit (The door is by the grafitti artist, Shades). Four Brixels were created as part of an original commission with Art X Detroit and four other murals have since been fostered by other groups. I'd say that there are somewhere between 10 and 15 murals up right now.