C. Tara Gladden
Artist - Curator - Educator
Artist Statement
I use my body as raw material to form experiences, installations, performances, sounds, and images. I treat my voice as an extension of my body and incorporate experimental vocal approaches and compositions into much of my work. I often merge my body and voice with natural phenomena, electronic processes and various materials allowing new methodologies to manifest through improvisation and experimentation.
I’m fascinated by human perception. I remain a constant student of how we interact with, and are affected by the world around us, and one another. My work explores effects and issues related to time, language and communication, human relationship to technology and nature, womanhood, aging, and identity.
I devise transformative processes to explore liminal moments and psychic spaces where one thing morphs into another; a body becomes an abstract form; a voice becomes an unrecognizable sound; a sound becomes an image; a word is stripped of meaning. This approach and these processes serve as a reminder of the fragility inherent in perceived realities, and the possibility for change in myself, and the world.
BIO
Tara Gladden is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator. Her artistic practice includes performance, sound, conceptual, and multimedia processes. She works independently and in close collaboration with her artistic partner and husband, David Gladden. Their work has been programmed and exhibited regionally, nationally, and internationally in festivals, private and non-profit galleries, established and DIY performance venues. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College in Performance and Interactive Media Arts, and a BM from Boston University in Voice Performance.
Tara has been an active cultural producer and educator for the past 20 years and has held posts that include gallery direction, curation, and live performance programming in higher education at Salisbury University in Salisbury, MD and at Washington College in Chestertown, MD. She began her curatorial activities in New York City, working with the NYC Anarchist Art Festival and The Living Theatre from 2009-2012. Over the years, she has developed courses and workshops in Voice, Music Technology, Social Practice, Environmental Art, New Media Art, Lens-based and Audiovisual Practices.
In 2012 for John Cage’s 100th birthday, she co-founded John Cage Memorial Park and Chance House Artist Residency with David Gladden on 4 ½ acres of land in the remote Chesapeake Bay fishing village of Chance, MD. From 2012-2018 she was a co-founder, co-curator, and collective member of W.O.R.K., a community art space devoted to adventurous art and music happenings on Salisbury MD’s downtown plaza.