Jane Tardo’s practice spans from commercial art to conceptual art, to public performance art. They primarily work in textiles, creating densely appliqué-quilt tapestries and textile collages. Embroidery, soft sculpture, and analog/virtual technologies also mend into the work. Inspired by the carnivalesque of modern americana, cellphones, holidays, reproductive health, companionship, and environmental/manmade disasters- Tardo creates handmade explorations of alternative approaches to life created through their projects as an inventor, sculptor, and designer.
Their work brings ever joyful solutions to daily troubles and creates absurd leisure activities to prompt reflection on the seams of reality and fantasy.
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The utopic Adventure Cattery Quilt Show is a series of textile tapestries. Using applique, collage, and quilting techniques, this work centers around hope, companionship, the love of cats and nature. They are the ultimate, flowery, surreal fantasy escapist relationships with the people we want to be, the places we want to go, the days that aren’t too hot or too cold, where flowers are always in bloom, and there are no biting bugs.
The Haunted Hearse Phone Rollercoaster is a fully immersive horror adventure ride for cellphones inside a ‘92 Cadillac hearse. This full production art car (or contraption box installation) features dynamic lighting design, textile-based scenic design, a cast of spooky monsters, and a groovy theme song, PLUS a bootique of cool homemade gifts! As a mixed media, large scale installation, this public art seamlessly combines craft, fiber arts, analog/virtual technologies, and live performance to deliver a spooky art experience like no other - Let your phone enter, if you dare!
Boutique prioritizes research and process. Tardo’s interactive, sculptural soft inventions analyze how trends, modern marketing, social media, and algorithms manipulate a perspective to the benefit of controlling the masses. In intricate sewn and machine embroidered packages, control is reclaimed with hands-on, persuasive communication and fool-proof branding techniques. Mimicking the promotional language, graphic style and overt optimism of modern marketing, the objects tune into what we are conditioned to want: products to help with intimacy, beauty, and control.
2 Minutes to Midnight (2019-2020) and 100 Seconds to Midnight (2020-present) is a series of sewn clocks constructed using a freestanding lace technique. They reference the Dooms Day Clock which was set to 2 minutes to midnight at the time this work was started. The DDC has since been moved to 100 seconds to midnight. They represent not only the concept of the Dooms Day Clock but also waking up each day and seeing the same time, the same bad news, the same impending doom. Of going through daily tasks, work, caring for others, all while knowing that environmental collapse and the suffering of millions will, without a doubt, be witnessed in my lifetime. Indeed, here in Louisiana and in other low laying delta communities... it is already happening.
Snake Tube Adventure Racing is the world’s first quilted analog-virtual reality radio controlled-Tube Car racetrack. The quilted dioramic installation, check-in booth, self-guided tour pamphlet, and giftshop represent and depict the reality forecasted for life on our compromised planet. The work utilizes blended technology including robotics and digital projection, paired with sewn landscapes and soft sculpture. The game-like experience seeks to prompt deeper consideration of the condition of disconnection and manipulation experienced within a society overseen by persuasive marketing and green-washing by mega-corporations. Designed to be an interactive spectacle, the work is an absurd reflection on the frivolity of contemporary living, competitive distraction, and joyful disassociation during ecological collapse.
Participants are invited to choose their own snake and pilot it through 24ft of climate collapsed, dystopian, apocalyptic landscapes. With up to four players for each race, players may attach their cell phone to the Tube Car to record or livestream the experience for their fans. In this dissociated climate-apocalypse competition, Snake Tube Adventure Racing explores obsessions with documentation, influence, and control using the lens of cell phones, humor, and playful indulgence.
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Jane Tardo is a born and based New Orleans artist. In 2005, they became a climate refugee following the levee failures of Hurricane Katrina. Being an early survivor of the effects of climate change is a dynamic source of Tardo’s focus on dystopic/utopic futures and the dream of a better world. Their themes are defined by existing in a post-Roe South while enduring generational burdens of poverty and sexism. Regardless of the frustrations of daily living, Tardo’s work revels in their region’s defiance of reason to give up hope, togetherness, and the joie de vivre.
Tardo earned their MFA from the University of New Orleans in 2020. Their work has been written about in the Washington Post, Antigravity Magazine, The Art Newspaper, Art News, and Pelican Bomb. Currently, Tardo serves as an instructor of sculpture at UNO, and as a sewing educator and volunteer at RicRack NOLA community sewing center.
Prior to being an artist/inventor, Tardo has a degree in International Studies (UNO ‘08) and has worked as an educator since 2009, in South Korea, Prague CZ, and New Orleans.