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May 3rd, 2006: A Daily Dose of Architecture
Urban Plough Tropolism may have beaten me to the punch, but I've been meaning to get something posted on Arizona artist Matthew Moore for a while so I figured I'd better do it sooner than later. This sort of earthwork naturally reminds of crop artist Stan Herd of Kansas. In their different ways, each artist uses the land to comment on American's relationship to the land, Moore apparently in terms of how we live and Herd more in terms of our history, especially in relation to indigenous peoples. Flyover Country Moore's artwork will be part of the upcoming New American City: Artists Look Forward exhibition coming in the fall to the Arizona State University Art Museum. |
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April 28th, 2006: AgriTalk
Download the April 28 link at the following page: http://www.agritalk.com/aa_filelist.php Once you have it downloaded on your player, bring it to the 30:00 mark. |
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April 24th, 2006: Arizona State University
The Crops Are Mature! Arizona State University Art Museum from the exhibtition NEW AMERICAN CITY: ARTISTS LOOK FORWARD September 9, 2006 - January 7, 2007 The Arizona State University Art Museum and Arizona artist Matt Moore invite you to join us for a continental breakfast and viewing of Moore's current art/farm project to celebrate the launch of the upcoming exhibition New American City: Artists Look Forward. On May 6th, the two crops Matt has planted, sorghum (representing the houses) and black bearded wheat (representing the streets), will be at the peak of their growth cycles. Sorghum, a summer crop, is now re-seeding, and black bearded wheat, a winter crop, is nearing harvest stage, so this will be a prime viewing time. About Matt Moore's Farm Projects Over the past few years, in an effort to deal with, and better understand, what the eventual loss of the farm to development will mean to Matt and his family, the artist/farmer has been creating large-scale projects on his family farm. He has tried to visualize what it will look like and how it will be used once the family no longer has control of the property. His current project is his largest to date. The family has sold a large acreage of land that is now under development as a housing subdivision. As the property was being sold, Matt obtained the city plans for the site. On an adjacent property, which is still owned by the family, Matt is recreating, in crops, the entire subdivision, complete with homes and streets. Arizona State University Art Museum Tenth Street and Mill Avenue, Tempe, AZ 85287-2911 tel: 480.965.2787, fax: 480.965.5254, email: asuartmuseum@asu.edu |
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April 24th, 2006: treehugger
Cool Hunting goes very Green by Lloyd Alter, Toronto Fabulous website Cool Hunting went all TreeHugger on us Friday, with a series of very green posts. Our favourite was Matthew Moore's Sycamore Farms, where the artist laid out a subdivision of sorghum houses and wheat-paved streets. Full of cool things, including a special Earth Day list. |
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April 24th, 2006: Meta Filter
When artist Matthew Moore found out part of the family farm was to become a suburban subdivision, he did what any farmer/artist would do, and recreated the subdivision in crops to show what it would look like in the surrounding landscape. (Read the ensuing discussion.) |
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April 21st, 2006: Cool Hunting
New American City: Sycamore Farms When artist and fourth generation farmer Matthew Moore found that farmland his family sold outside of Pheonix, Arizona was slated for a housing development, he decided to protest. Instead of picket signs, Moore took to the land, and recreated the subdivision in crops on neighboring property. He calls the earthwork "Sycamore Farms." Complete with houses represented by sorghum and Black bearded wheat-paved streets, Moore's piece continues themes related to agricultural America and urban sprawl that he's explored in previous works when he mowed large-scale blueprints into fields and lawns. Sycamore Farms is part of New American City, an exhibit that opens 9 September 2006 at Arizona State University's Art Museum that looks at visual culture and development in and around Phoenix. Images. |
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March 23, 2006: Phoenix New Times
The Farmer and the Belle - Another side of things By Leanne Potts "Phoenix artists Carrie Marill and Matt Moore, both 29, couldn't be more different from each other -- on the surface, anyway. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area; he grew up on a farm in Waddell. He is a fourth-generation farmer known for plowing floor plans of tract houses into 40-acre barley fields; she is known for making intimate, elegant paintings of furniture and fake plants. The husband and wife share their lives and their studio space on Grand Avenue, and they also share an interest in making art about how our acquisitive natures get the better of us." (This is an excerpt, click to read the interview.) |
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December 9th, 2005: West Valley View
Waddell agriculturist creates a new hybrid: farmer/artist By Mike Burkett Upon initial consideration, there may seem to be few occupations as wildly disparate as farming and art. But farmer/artist Matthew Moore of Waddell not only has dedicated his life to both, he has combined them. At this moment, Moore's acclaimed multimedia documentation of the Southwest's fast-fading "Salad Bowl" era is one-fourth of a "Regarding the Rural" exhibition now on view in North Adams, Mass., at MASS MoCA, the country's largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts. Although the center of Moore's showcases are his photographs, his virtual canvases are the fields of Sycamore Farms, which sit on a square mile of Waddell owned by his family since the early 1930s. Last year, for example, Moore grew a 20-acre field of barley and over five months used a hoe to carve out the floor plan of a giant, three bedroom, two bath model home - and then took pictures of his work from the ground and an airplane. (This is an excerpt, click to read full article). |
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September 29th, 2005: Phoenix New Times: Best Of Phoenix
Best Stop On Art Detour - The studio of Carrie Marill and Matt Moore "We ambled through dozens of studios during Art Detour, the downtown Phoenix art walk sponsored by ArtLink that's held one weekend each year, usually in March. Months later, we have to admit, our recall of this year's now institutionalized city art event is just all one big beige blur -- except for a very distinct spot that stands out in our memory. It's the shared studio space of Carrie Marill and Matthew Moore -- a well-tended Grand Avenue, by-appointment-only studio at the very back of a series of artist studios leased out for years by art doyenne Beatrice Moore. Husband and wife, Marill and Moore peacefully and productively co-exist in their joint studio space, and, while their work is very different, you get the feeling that, in many ways, they share not only physical space, but the same basic aesthetic as well. Moore's work is land-based, inspired by his day job as manager of his family's fourth-generation farm in the West Valley. Marill's stylistically stripped-down yet elegant paintings and drawings of various landscapes explore the idea of the sameness that pervades society. As we stood gazing at Marill's beautiful paintings, an artist we trust whispered, "Buy something -- she's getting big in L.A." (See our "Fun and Games" section in Best of Phoenix for examples of Marill's work.) So we did, after which Moore offered us a gigantic home-grown carrot, which, along with the couple's artwork, was the sweetest thing we'd tasted all weekend. " |
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October 16th, 2005: the Times Union
Capturing a vanishing way of life (excerpts) By Tresca Weinstein Matthew Moore FARMER AND ARTIST Matthew Moore created "Rotations--Single Family Residence" (2004), a giant outline of a model home carved in a barley field as a response to farmland being sold for housing development. Images of the piece are on display in "Regarding the Rural" at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. ...As an artist and a fourth-generation farmer, Matthew Moore is documenting a slowly dying way of life his own. Moore has videotaped himself doing chores on his farm in Waddell, Ariz., and has replicated a wheat field inside a gallery. Last year, in response to the impending sale of hundreds of acres of land around his farm for the building of subdivisions, he grew an 18-acre field of barley and used a hoe to ``draw'' into it a giant floor plan of a model home. "I'm trying to make that correlation here's a barley field that's going to be homes," Moore says. "It's a double-edged sword. We're remorseful to give away a long history, but we're also enabling a family to better themselves. I'm exploring the responsibility agriculture has to basically embrace development." Aerial and on-the-ground photographs of Moore's vast blueprint in barley 5,500 feet of hoed lines, each line 8 feet wide are on view in the exhibit "Regarding the Rural" at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. The show, featuring the work of Moore and four other photographers, runs through Dec. 31 in the museum's Prints and Drawings Gallery... ...Moore, meanwhile, continues to document change using the land itself as a medium. His latest project is a 40-acre replica of a projected housing development, with the homes rendered in sorghum and the roads in black-bearded wheat. Once his grandfather eventually sells the farm, Moore plans to move his work into the urban environment, envisioning a land-free future of farming in which crops are grown within walls, inside buildings and on top of skyscrapers. Moore says it's taken him a long time to arrive at a more philosophical attitude toward what he sees as the inevitable passing of the family farm. "Sitting on the porch with a shotgun isn't going to help," he says with a wry laugh. "These projects hopefully create a dialogue about how we are progressing in our society, and the manner in which we develop and grow." |
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April 2005, Contemporary Forum in conjunction with Phoenix Art Museum
Contemporary Forum Artists Grant Work selected by panel of judges selected by Brady Roberts, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Phoenix Art Museum Arizona Commision on the Arts: Artist Project Grant award for proposed earthwork: Rotations: Sycamore Farms Planned Area Development. |
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Saturday, November 27th 2004, 9:00pm: NPR - This Week on Studio 360, www.wnyc.org/studio360/
Tractors, Teatro, Barnyard: Matthew Moore The unrelenting sprawl of tract houses and big box stores has made its way to Wadell, Arizona, outside of Phoenix, pushing out small farms. Matt Moore's family has farmed there for decades, and before his farm becomes a subdivision, he decided to make art about it, by plowing the floor plans of tract houses into his barley fields. Abigail Beshkin, from KJZZ in Phoenix, has the story of the farmer with a Masters in Fine Art. Listen to the interview |
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July 14th, 2004: KJZZ - Morning Edition/All Things Considered, www.kjzz.org/news/arizona/archives/200407/matthewmoore
Profile of Matthew Moore, Farmer and Artist (Phoenix, AZ ) In the West Valley tract homes and big box stores are pushing agriculture out. Sycamore Farms in Waddell has been owned by the Moore family since the 1940's. It's managed by Matt Moore... who in addition to being a farmer is an artist. Like many Western artists Matt Moore comments on development and urban sprawl. But unlike most he does it from the inside as a full-time farmer. KJZZ's Abigail Beshkin profiles artist Matt Moore. View KJZZ's photo gallery of arial photos of Matthew's work, along with the materials and processes used with his creations. |
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January 29th, 2004: Phoenix New Times, www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2004-01-29/culture/art.html
Earthbound Shemer marks its anniversary by celebrating the land by Kathleen Vanesian "Land" takes full advantage of both Shemer's interior and exterior spaces, spilling out the doors of the art center's vintage building into the lawn and garden areas of the property. Blink once and you may miss one of the most important outside installations of the show, created by artist Matthew Moore. Shemer's own happy-ending history informs Moore's exterior earthwork piece dug into the citrus-dotted grounds adjacent to the hacienda turned gallery. From a fourth-generation farming family that still tills the soil for a living in the West Valley surrounded by the omnipresent threat of residential development, Moore (who actually works on his family's farm) often makes art that revolves around the insidious encroachment of the urban on the rural. For "Land," he has hand-excavated part of the Shemer property in the shape of a to-scale floor plan of a 1,750-square-foot house, one of too many that probably would have been built where Shemer Art Center stands, had the Phoenix benefactress not grabbed it from the clutches of land-hungry developers. A quick glance at Moore's rudimentary excavation is all it takes to appreciate that Shemer easily could have been transformed into a maze of tacky, charm-deprived little houses, the sort that continue to invade the Valley. (This is an excerpt, click to read full article). |
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