ARTIST STATEMENT

Our interdisciplinary practice explores ideas related to time, space/site, and human perception. Integrating video, sound, performance, installation, sculpture, 2-d, collage and photography, our projects navigate questions related to our human relationship with technology, transmission and communication systems, and nature. 

 

We work with found and recycled materials such as cardboard, paper, metal, plastic, obsolete video monitors and outdated consumer grade technology. Recycled materials are often juxtaposed with custom-designed fabricated forms. The intersection of handmade/craft and machine-made/factory aesthetics reflects both our engagement with DIY methods and our relationship to technology. Our materials also span different time periods, different technological eras, triggering disparate cultural/historical associations and meanings.

 

We are concerned with art historical concepts and the tensions that exist within opposites such as: traditional art/new media, stillness/movement, analog/digital, emptiness/fullness, handmade/factory aesthetics. We create works that embrace colorful hybrid forms challenging binaries of strict categorization. These explorations of hybridity align with nature and culture’s tendency to constantly change, creating unexpected combinations.

 

 

BIO

C. Tara and David Gladden are life partners and collaborative, interdisciplinary artists. Their wide-ranging, multi-layered practice includes video, sound, animation, performance, photography, collage, installation, and sculpture. Their work has been presented nationally and internationally in festivals, private and non-profit galleries, established and DIY performance spaces including regional venues in DC: Civilian Art Projects, Brentwood Arts Exchange, in Baltimore; Metro Gallery, and in NYC: Artists Outpost Resource, Grace Exhibition Space, HereArts Center, The Living Theatre, Judson Memorial Church, and Emily Harvey Gallery, among others. They both hold MFAs from Brooklyn College, where they attended the Performance and Interactive Media Arts Program as a collaborative duo. In 2012, they founded John Cage Memorial Park, an artist residency and land art project on 4 ½ acres of pine forest in the fishing village of Chance, Maryland. David is Associate Professor and Area Head of New Media Art at Salisbury University, and Tara is Gallery Director and Curator for the Kohl Gallery at Washington College in Chestertown, MD.

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