My artwork examines modern existence by toying with and often times conflating notions surrounding high and low culture. Towards this end, I create colorful, site-based drawings where everyday materials are often repurposed.
I came of age in the ‘80s, a time when conspicuous consumption was the prevailing narrative. As a teenager, I would join my mom and sister to “shop ‘til we drop”. Sometimes my mom would even let us skip school to go on these shopping adventures.
These trips were highly ritualized. We would hit the stores for what we called “flybys” wherein we would fly through a store trying to catch a glimmer of something new in a sea of commodities. How do you make yourself an individual when all you have to define yourself with is what you can find in a mall? This was not a leisurely, ladies-who-lunch activity, but something more akin to survival. It was exhausting, exhilarating work, which left me with a deep sense of ambivalence.
As an artist, I go shopping for my artwork. I find it both thrilling and repulsive to do so— to do research and get inspiration from big box stores, gas station mini-marts, industrial salvage sites and found objects on the street. My artwork is not simply anthropological. It is not outcome-oriented but rather process-oriented. The pursuit, this filling of a void is a never-ending, never-satisfying cycle of consumption.
At a very visceral level, I am both mesmerized and horrified by these pop sensibilities and consumer behaviors. By examining this internal tension, my artwork seeks to transform the ordinary into something special and reflect on modern material existence and consumerism.
BIOGRAPHY
Mary Carter Taub is an artist living and working in Chapel Hill, NC.
She holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from School of Visual Arts in New York, NY in 1994 and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Thunderbird, School of Global Management in Glendale, AZ in 2001.
Since the 1990s, Mary has worked as an installation artist. Over the last several years she has shifted her focus to making public artwork and community based artwork. She has exhibited nationally in traditional spaces such as the Islip Art Museum and PS 122 Gallery in New York and non-traditional spaces such as a storage POD and an in-service city bus, both of which housed site-specific, two-dimensional work.
Last year Mary partnered with the Town of Chapel Hill on a Percent for Art project at Umstead Park to create Jolly Branch, a mural that covers the playground surface. It is the first rubberized mural in the State of North Carolina.
