Katerie Gladdys

Gainesville, Florida

“I endeavor to make art that awakens curiosity: transforming spectators into participants yearning to explore their surrounding environments, perhaps developing individual and collective strategies to connect and co-exist with the world around them.”

Katerie Gladdys creates installations, sculptures, and performance art which examine how we create a sense of place. Her practice is informed by research in geography, environmental studies, forestry, ethnography, agriculture (specifically food systems), and community activism. She sees community as both a resource for the creation of knowledge and scholarship, and an opportunity to engage with and contribute to society. With her installation, Thy Neighbor’s Fruit, Gladdys asks us to consider how nature informs our relationships with places and with each other.

With her practice, Gladdys emphasizes the importance of sharing knowledge about and experiences with nature. As part of her installation for Art that Matters to the Planet, and in partnership with the Jamestown Public Market and Cornell Cooperative Master Preservers, RTPI and Gladdys hosted a jam-making event for volunteers in the Jamestown community. “Jammers” gathered to learn how to preserve blueberries, and to learn about the relationship between food preservation and sustainability. During the jam-making event, members of the Jamestown community contributed to the audio narrative that accompanied her installation.