Meet Taryn Andre

Today we’d like to introduce you to Taryn Andre.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I am a fashion designer, turned fashion photographer, turned fashion tech entrepreneur. Sounds like indecisiveness but all of my creative interests complement each other. I have a B.F.A. in fashion design from SCAD. Design was something I knew I wanted to do since I was age 12. While in Art school my dad gave me a collection of his film cameras, and I always kept a little cheap point and shoot camera with me so that I could photograph the clothes I designed. Photography was the fantasy aspect of fashion to me, and I enjoyed taking pictures so much that I taught myself how to shoot.

Please tell us about your art.
I’m currently creating an app that caters to the fashion community called ModelSwipe. It’s a networking/swiping app that allows creative professionals to connect with models of their preference for the creative project they are working on. Despite me and my cofounder having no initial knowledge or background in app development, we have the skillsets and resources to properly communicate our vision. We’ve been working with a close-knit team of developers for a little over a year now to assist in bringing our vision to life. There’s an app for just about anything now, and with me being a fashion designer and photographer, I think its time the creative community has an app for emerging and independents artists to network in a more organized way.

What do you think about conditions for artists today? Has life become easier or harder for artists in recent years? 
An artist’s creative life has become both harder and easier for their own unique reasons. It’s easier because the internet and social media allows artists to promote their work on their own terms, and engage directly with their tribe. Modeling agencies, Magazines, Art Dealers etc.; for a longtime, they’ve all acted as middlemen and often had a lot of power regarding the level of exposure an artist would receive. With social media, the artist can cut the middleman out completely and have more flexibility, freedom, and control in sharing their art.

I’d say the artist’s creative life is harder because social media is slowly but surely conditioning creative people to base the quality and value of their work on the amount of likes and followers that they have. So sometimes artists ‘dumb down’ their work to get the social validation that they are looking for, instead of sharing the type of work they’re actually passionate about. Or some artists are discouraged and stop making art because they keep scrolling through their feed and looking at the work of artists that they feel are better than them. So, the comparison, and competitive aspect of social media is what makes it harder.

What can cities like ours do to encourage and help art and artists thrive?
Buy more art from independent artists. Create more hubs, workspaces, and residencies for artists.

How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
Support my work by downloading the ModelSwipe app it when it launches for android and iOS in 2019 :-). If you’d like to be photographed, you can book me at tarynandre.com 🙂 or from my Instagram- @imtarynandre

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.tarynandre.com/
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imtarynandre/
• Other: http://modelswipe.co/

Image Credit:
Muses Jamillah McWhorter and Gabrielle, Photographed by Me.
Muse Chinelo, Photographed by Me.

Getting in touch: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.