Artist Alison Elizabeth Taylor is known for creating biting social critiques executed through the exquisite craft of marquetry, or wood veneer inlay. Taylor, who is a recent MFA graduate of Columbia University School of Art, creates narratives that offer insight into America by investigating the distractions of contemporary culture such as sex, video games and luxury SUVs. The artist’s combination of marquetry, often associated with luxury and the reign of Louis XIV, and the ideologies of American life, further underscores the opulence of our time. This year the artist presented “The Powder Room,” an exhibition with Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles, and last year she exhibited with the James Cohan Gallery in New York City. Taylor has received awards from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program and the Herbert S. Germaise Fellowship for painting and drawing.