I am of the artist type who always strives to emote a new artwork visually - in a way that surprises me – or through which I find a finishing point very quickly - after going through a long and tedious process working the base materials. I rarely begin with a drawing – or even a concept – instead, I carefully choose my components for their potential contribution to the emotional state I find myself in. It is my emotional state that drives me to create – and emotions can be stirred by beauty, present, past, or an anticipated experience, tragedy, or whatever else moves the human spirit. I have trained myself diligently, through the years, to act out upon my emotions by developing skill sets that can allow me to hunt for art as a hunter hunts for food – knowing there are hungry mouths to feed. I always feel purposed. In the early stages, like I said, I gather components for the experience – not always sure what I will need – I over load sometimes, and drop off access baggage as my focus becomes more acute. In my portfolio, I carry a number of themes I return to over time. So, my series may be slow developing – or may be born, propagaited, and finished in a short period. Again, I am driven by my emotions – but my work is near-totally dependent upon my skill sets. I liken my art as trying to catch a songbird with a net whose tinsel strength is only as great as that perhaps of a spider’s web… I know the web will not hold the bird – but it might slow it down long enough for me to capture its truest voice, it’s, ‘virtue’s song,’ when it is closest to me.
Now to my, "Series Theories..." - 2nd draft –bmm 21Nov.2008
"A "Series," for an artist - at least for me, becomes a standard, or a storyline, through which I convey the concepts, and visual values, of my day and night dreams. Paradigms and archetypes, as language, in an artistic medium are never contrary, despite the randomness that may flower out of my efforts through the years. I have never wished to create the spelling of any condescending, or ill-bearing revelation philosophies. It is therefore, through much consideration, and patience, that my work evolves. In this world, and this age of complexities, I wade through a flux of extravagancy - a river of mirroring perceptions and real life truths. The latter is messy, filled with beauty, plights, haves and have-nots. Our Earth, waning in its natural wonders, is overwrought in human excessiveness. On this planet exists the majority of us – neither starving, nor welding the greatest wealth, or power – except though our common streams of consciousness, that can allow us to overcome, both, the ills of our most needy, and the corruption of our most powerful. We only need to exercise it - sometimes leaders are helpful. Aside from this, the middle of us is so wide – it is full enough of extremes beyond the expanding limits that outbound it. And, in the center of this entire universe – I take up my small space… I am but one human being wishing to express myself... It is a humbling experience, trying to put a dent into the veneer of these truths I am aiming through. During my career, I have cruised along, mostly of my own concurrence, within this life surrounding me (and often with less support from my community than I could have wished for - helping me relate to common man). But, I have followed through, upon my oceans of notions, and developed my visions - along with many recalibrations throughout the length of my chosen path. As a traditional folk song, in parts, goes, “The water is wide, I can not cross over, and neither have I - wings to fly… I know not how – to sink or swim… loaded deep as deep can be, on this ship I am in.” So, when the dust has settled by the midst – my art will represent my wonder of it all. If there is a defining nature to my work – it may be the quality, “Ever-changing.” I have grown to know myself as a, 'reflecting soul.' As far as I can see, the rest of my life must remain conjecture, and mystery... Such notions are always - ever changing. I am not as great a fence-mender, as much as I am a builder of walls to hold up my dreams. Some will fabricate a steady stream in their body of works. I have rather, 'meddled in the spices,' in mine. As such, my art has come to develop into an amalgamation of my experiences that have grown into what I call, Digital Artifacts... Be what they may, I shall never try to explain that my digital artifacts are the sum of a great plan – only the sum of what I beg to share from my own finite life - as I have studiedy and exercised to better define it."
– Brad Michael Moore / 28 July, 2008, age 56 years. (Redrafted 08/03/08)
As a Born-Again Visual Artist, I was destined, by birth, to have one foot set into two different generations of art history. One side of me was raised on the Analogue milk tit, and the other side followed – learning to breath under the surface of a digital buzz of bits, gigs, and ram dimms... The key to surviving in both worlds, for me, has been a story as much about observation, as it has been over implementation. My experience in the music recording business, with Russell Berger, in the mid to late 1970’s, perhaps was my most essential primer. The digital convergence arrived at our recording console as a forewarning to me, personally – that my analogue explorations, in the image capture realm – in which I was also exercising, would come to meet an eventual digital intervention as well – a decade later. That sagacious voyage was one I was prepared for – as I knew my journey through the world of image capture would grow to become a continually amending sojourn. And so it has. Accordingly, in this moment, I slow, and take in a greater apprehension of it all, and what my pliability to the nature of my perceptions has made of me – a maker of Digital Artifacts. – Brad Michael Moore 5/29/2008
"Night Life in the Park Cities" / BarCode Series - (Original Hand-cut from the Digital Dream Series - Inversed)
The BarCode Series was first started as a result of a group of artists at #artmesh - a private Art group. The idea is for artists to create images of our planet in a format any of us might consider as a BarCode, subjectively. Artists world-wide are participating - including myself. It is a challenge, and fits well as a concept in my work, generally. This will be an ongoing series.
(*) See Price page for ordering.
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Date of Series origin: 05/2008 - Ongoing...
"Falling into 'Lost Friend' (Life Goes On - But Never Fully Without You)..."
"Falling into 'Lost Friend' (Life Goes on - But Never Fully Without You...)"
This is a portrait of an old friend, now but essences of diffused color spill - her life light just particles of my memories. For we, the living, as our lives go on - those we loved and lost the furtherest back - transform into every changing elements to our perceptions. The one constant - they always remain to one degree or another... -- #1 "Falling into Spirit" (Lightest Colors) #2 "Falling into Memory" (Electrolytes) #3 "Falling into Letters" (Dear Dairy) #4 "Falling into Nature" (Greater Truth) #5 "Falling into "Lost Friend" (Life Goes On - But Never Fully Without You) --- For Process Order Viewing: Click on last Artifact and scan backwards...
(*) What this series reveals about my process may be that I find the spirit of a work first (as illustrated here) and then the harder part of the journey begins. Since I work Metaphorically, where I begin is far away the point of where I wish to arrive. This creates difficulties for me in my digital processes when I seek a more solid rendering from a mostly particularized initial concept. I do not use an additive process like a painter - who might begin with outline, under-painting and texturing, and more literal defining upon those gessoed-veiled beginnings. The veils between my final work, and its beginning stages, are veils drifting like cloudscapes between me and my imagination. Eventually, like opening the corner of a seed bag - I finally spill out enough seed onto my Artifact to allow it to grow into my field of dreams...
(*) Notice the original colors in my first Artifact are the same defining colors of my subject in my finally Digital Delivery.
These are small maps to my soul. A digital rendering viewpoint, mind you. It is but one view - for one's soul may be seen as if through a prism - in many faces and levels of spirituality. Or if you like - this is an example of how I see paper, color, and texture in my mind. Tomorrow, I will see it in a different light - but similar... -- I did not do a historical study and image search of ancient parchments before I began this series. I tried to remember what I know. This series is idealistic. Many true parchments are filled with cracking, holes, extreme fading and bleed-through. The earlier papers were not white - but gray and yellow an very purplish. Like any drawing made going on through history, often, the edges were left unworked so to provide some working surface space for testing medium, notes, imperfections and so on. The inside of animal hides were first used... Paper made from wood pulp was well along when the Monastery Monks began to do their color illustrations - boarders were fairly standard - and within their illustrations - especially the color ones, no space was left untouched. These works would have light colored boarders. Many an illustration's life began bounded in a book - later to be pilfered by criminals, and those who lust for what they cannot create for themselves. These pages got rolled, folded, hidden, sometime in caves, behind stones, under earth for periods, or open to elements in porous enclosed spaces, available to insects, rodents, and finally age. One of my works is a stack of parchments, by intention. So, in truth, most old parchments are monotoned - center to edge, except for their painting and calligraphy. Crumpling would destroy any old parchment - they would have been most damaged in their earliest times of pliability - before being lost, forsaken, or forlorn. Sometimes, to better protect a parchment of importance, it was rebounded, or rolled in other parchments or leathers - and indeed, the hides of animals themselves were still used as writing material and more often, as protective coverings for the more fragile documents and maps as they came to be known. The idea of hide usage is suggested in several works including the, "Canyonlands" piece. Even today - some artists buy materials from fabric markets and paint on the backside of those materials - as if they too were common day man-made hide.
This series centers around one shot. The subject of this series is about the notions I have over the secret of images. I long ago discovered that a photographic image may be rendered by a set of rules, established before my time, so that other observers may judge it. This idea is particularly expressed in photography, where you can have stringent protocols that are the parameters by with specific qualities of an image may be predictable. If you are a black and white photographer using the analogue Ansel Adams, "Zone System," your image may be judged solely on its successful depictions unveiled by the rules of the film and print processing guidelines that strictly exhibit known and repeatable results. So, suddenly, content stands in a secondary position to some high thinking observers- the sticklers of predictable details. It is always the fodder of debate.
Well, that doesn't sound much like me... However, I was in business with a friend, Douglas E. Tomlinson, who found great comfort in the science of predictability. I came to appreciate his tenacity for spelling out all the discoverable details. Back in 1972, I knew that if you don't understand how chemical processing time, and temperature can compensate for a mistaken exposure of light upon a 4 x 5 inch sheet of film - you might, one day, have to face a very unhappy bride who's brightest memory is based upon a singular moment that cannot be retrieved by you...
Anyway, I digress to make a point. This set will consider other aspects, parameters, and perhaps, non-quantifiable considerations about a single image. Lately, I have talked about my approach to my art these days – let me quote myself, “Just as a painter sometimes underpaints by design, and out of other reasons, or needs - I seek the hidden images inside the surfaces of my image captures. No original image is only as it appears. Not for me. When I can dissect a pixel - I can grow a dream...” So, in order to express my notion, I decided to pick an image – one that is older, from early in my career, and one I felt I have never fully explored. This idea has been in the back of my mind for a long time. A film, or digital capture, normally can be reproduced to a specification and likeness historically expected for the subject and medium. We know when producing a normal city or landscape – the sky will be blue if the color is true. We know a photographer, when shooting for black and white renderings may use a red, or a polarizing filter to darken the sky, or eliminate unwanted reflections and whiten clouds. Today, in the digital lab – these steps may also be taken artificially. When we photograph people – expectations are much the same if not more particular – the reasons you might guess for yourself. What I know is that I have seldom seen one portrait image being made over time after time – each rendering more than a bit different than the other.
I have always tried to print one image the best I could according to my values and skills at the time of printing. Here, I want to see multiple images from the same single negative each rendered differently – yet still made of the same stuff... I want to explore the nature of an image and what it really may have to offer me. So comes this series I have titled my, “Sa'she'ahna Series. It is a series of renderings made from the elements of one primary photograph taken in Dallas, Texas, in the fall of 1974. Over the course of a week, with the help of digital plug-ins and PhotoShop (and my imagination), I have come up with these images... In addition to my primary portrait, I used one landscape image from my farm as digital goo for background. I also created backgrounds from the goo of my primary image - as well as digital goo I reciped up from scratch. Also, I incorporated two texture filters I downloaded from Mayang's Free Texture Library - which I just checked out, and now - it appears to no longer exist - sorry. Still, I used Peacock Fan and Redgoldripplat. What I hope I achieved is a set representing a theory I have about imagery – and the subjective essences I can gather into objective renderings when I put my mind to it. You will have to be the judge over the fact of if I reached and made my point or not... - Brad Michael Moore
Pain is likely the primary component of life. This is likely true in final death too. I have a chance to test a theory after a injury in Feb., 2008. This series began as a simple labor – born near the end of last year. Then, in period of a few days, through much process, this series has been painted through personal pain. I have set out to test my will. While surrounded in aches, spasms, and awkward positions – I have held on to my beliefs, a desire, if I overlook my hurting - long enough; I could discover a gauging, which declares, there is also absolute beauty where there is pain. This is the simple task of this series. Having degenerative disk disease, in both my lower, and upper back, including a crushed first Lumbar Vertebra and two herniated disks... I recently blew out (ruptured) three more consecutive disks while undergoing a CAT scan by an inexperienced diagnostician who literally nearly broke my neck, trying to position it for his scan. I am a southpaw, suddenly with a 50% loss of use in my left arm and hand. Along with this issue, I had had a "vibrating" back spasm for 4 weeks straight - after I suffered this injury. The pain is writhing when I am in the sitting position - as at the dinner table, computer, or driving an automobile... Lucky for me, I have a computer chair that allows me to work inclined at a 45 degree angle - and I became more proficient with the capability of my right hand. I'm not totally crazy - after completing this series, I have taken a small bit of rest, while trying to find someone who can help me - uninsurable as I am in America - Land of the Once Great - still needing to prove to me we can be so again.
I began the birth series before this titled, "Tinker Bell," late last year. It is from the final rendering of that small series which contains the pixel material that began the starting point of this, "Alpha-Omega Series." It became the digital soup for the workings presented in this series. Sincerely, Brad
The sphere has always held a special interest to me. When I was 13 years old, - around the summer of 1965, my brother, and several childhood friends - out for and evening stroll, witnessed what had to be an exploding star - it turned the baseball field, at the camp we were crossing in, brighter than day - and when I looked up to the heavens - a blue white day-like sky quickly the light turned into a receding and darkening halo - like a circle of prism reflection in the night sky. The light ring (brighter on the inside than the outside) quickly shrunk to the size of a large planet and disappeared. There is a name for these phenomena, Super Nova. This image has never been lost on me, and I have always been interested in spherical forms every since.
It is always an interesting dilemma for me as a photographer, when considering the options of imaging death and suffering. Some image purveyors often seek that sort of finding. Even with all of today’s images of war in the media, we never can completely look away from the subject. Perhaps it enraptures the relevance of perseverance in our humanity. Maybe it represents a curiosity that only our faith alone can spell to us. I live close to a relatively rugged terrain known as the Big Rock Area, in Jack County, Texas. In the area of this place, in the dimness of a crescent moonlit night, coyotes attacked an eight point White Tail buck deer. Both my neighbor and I heard the canids howling on the evening of the incident. Perhaps, the buck fended off the pack so his doe mate could escape their attack. He too escaped - but later bled to death from his flank injuries. Before meeting his fate, he crossed a pond on my property, and behind my home, to a small Willow covered island. I was caught by surprise to see him standing there on the bank - I could not see an injury. After he laid down, and appeared to go asleep - I wandered out to the pond with my binoculars to see if he was breathing... He was near to the water’s edge, on the island’s south side - protected from the biting winds a Blue Norther sharply passing through. In this place he laid down he also passed away. I watched the process and later, I too, crossed that pond. Moving within my waders through a shallow point of the pond, I sat with this Cervidae for a little while - after I had determined he was no longer breathing. At his side, I inspected the animal’s wounds and marveled at how he could have effectively survived the recent hunting season, only to fall to a predator of a truer natural instinct than that of man. I knew this buck, for he had often rubbed his horns on many of my Cedar trees. Each of the next three nights, I observed a doe staying close to the outer banks of the pond... I’ve renamed my isle to "Antler Island," and will pass on this experience as part of the lore of this land I presently live upon - the buck's bones are still there (7 days later, moved to the top of the island by the coyotes that had attacked him - finally getting their meal). This is a 100% mirror image revealed from a still water surrounding the island and flipped 180 degrees. I waited 3 days for the wind to settle enough to provide me a near perfect reflection.
MultiPlexing represents a process of mirroring and unfolding an image to observe its hidden symmetrical qualities. I apply the process to a wide range of subjects, transforming simpler random forms them transforming them through additive processes into new structures of balance and symmetry, revealing new meanings. Sometimes, I destabilize the course via additive visual notions that slightly skew the image equilibrium. I began practicing the MultiPlexing art form piecemeal (by the single analogue photo image process) in the darkroom - a very laborious exercise. Digital processes makes things much easier. My first exhibitions of MultiPlexes (in the form of photo-assemblages) were shown in 1984, in Dallas, Texas, at the Turtle Creek Gallery, and in 1987, at the Houston Center for Photography. This work, perhaps seeded from Op Art, seeks to be more than a Rorschach Test, more than a wallpaper. I search, through the mind-friendly medium of repetition, to uncover formal beauty in an external world of randomness.
This is a group of monochromatic and multi-colored images. They represent values attached to elements of luminancity, and symbolic of humankind's need for stature, power, and imagination. I have - in the past, used the photographic medium as an object reflector (an objectfiler). Here, I use my negatives as if they were an old Chinaman's paintbrush - static put into a more liquid like motion... I'm using my negative's resource fluidly, to create non-photographic appearing images using the negative for its inherited qualities of contrast, shadows, muted color, and detail. I now see the medium as being very pliable and I want to stretch it in diverse ways by striping away its representational aspects and enhancing its more ephemeral qualities. Note: This is a very delicately reproduced series, and may only be truly appreciated by zooming to its largest capacity. Thumbnails appear soft & less focused than actual image.
I'm going to make this statement a continuing, 'work in progress,' for I have taken landscapes for soooo long into my life. I think of landscape, like eating scrambled eggs - always a bit different every time you order breakfast. The eggs change with their treatment of the condiments spent upon them. Nature is the purest topic of my pursuits. It is has no hidden agenda. Part of my need to capture landscapes may have died down a bit since I retired my old Wet Darkroom. I did my last "Wet Darkrooming," in Jan. 1993. What is left of those days sits in my less than 20 flat file drawers of an oak cabinet. I look through the prints every year - just to check how they are aging. Some of these images are nearly 48 years old - and I consider a number of them as collector's items... No one has really seen my personal chemical and paper produced image collection, from my wet darkroom, since I moved the collection from Dallas in Jan. 1993. But this is where the landscapes and early fine art works are - from my early career and travels, and studio explorations. I began taking nature images as a 6-year-old with my grandmother’s twin-lens Argus – that was back around 1958. I began seriously photographing (in earnest) around 1967 – alongside the coming days of Woodstock, and, “The Summer of Love,” (1969). Nature became my keen interest by 1975, and held my primary concentration for another ten years. Thereafter, I became curious in manipulating my landscapes, altering, enhancing, and even growing my images into an art beyond their own realism... These days I look at nature, and the landscape, through different eyes. I concern myself with the vital elements - the smaller pieces that make up larger scapes. You might call it a Macro-Vision curiosity - versus a micro vision curiosity. Many look at the fundamental aspects of nature with expensive capture devices. I am more interested in what I can see with the naked eye, and then the digital camera. I seek the earthen aspects that say something about what has happened that now finds itself under my feet - remnants of human exposure upon the landscape - also, the landscape aspect that still holds its own against what humankind has flurried about in it's midst. I usually take the tones of these events and characteristics - capture them digitally, in these times - then I mix them up into one of my, 'Digital Soup recipes,' after which I reformulate that mixture into a new vision I call a, 'Digital Delivery, or Artifact.' You may not recognize my works as landscapes anymore - but, the landscape is there - pixel paint repaletted throughout my once analog, now digital realm, reconstituted and sprayed through tiny nozzles onto new archival papers. Therein shines the nature and landscape onto most all my works now, such are my Artifacts.
My, "Digital Dream Series," was a watershed series for me. It was my first series to integrate digital technology into my work. On the face of those images, in this series, I was still using Wet Darkroom Print & Exposure technologies to produce Analogue outcomes. However, to take advantage of my multiple Color Head enlarger setup - I needed a new way to develop easier, ‘multi-negative single imagery,’ using multiple negatives on multiple enlargers - all exposing a single sheet of paper. To accomplish this revelation, I went into my woodworking shop and built 5 heavy wooden - exact-sized 20x24 inch easels - once for each of my enlargers. Now, I could carry a single sheet of paper, from enlarger to enlarger, and expose varying portions of that sheet of paper with different negatives. To bring a more exact order, and precise separation of exposure, to specific areas of my paper - I needed to create a matting process. I began with simple designs I could cut into mat board with an exacta-knife, This allowed me to build simple multi-exposed images as I moved, both mat and paper, between my preset, exact-sized easels (fixed in predetermined positions), at each enlarger station - each holding separate, multiple format exposed films (pre-enlarged and focused). To achieve a more sophisticated mat design - I turned to the guidance of Acoustical Design Engineer, friend, and mentor, Russell Berger - who aimed me towards an early version of AutoCAD Software. This allowed me to express more organic designs - like puzzle shaped line drawings. I then found a vendor with a, "Water Saw" - a huge, expensive, computer driven device, with a nozzle that can spit a fine stream of water at an extremely powerful PSI into most any organic material - and cut it like a hot knife to butter with the precision of an aged-experience draftsman. I used a heavy matte board backed with a layer of thin magnetic rubber. With a number of concept 'templates,' in mind, I planned several dozen of these new, 'Multi-exposure templates,' and ran them all in the same workflow to adhere to my lowly budget of the time. I was taking a 'Digital' gamble. Once I had returned to my darkroom, and exposed a portfolio of images (over a nearly six-week period) - I knew I had come to see my art in a whole new way. This was the beginning of seeing analogue through creative digital filtering processes. So began the path now 20 years old... - Brad Michael Moore / 08/03/08
Critical Mass is close approaching for the world as we have known it. New generations are peaking and failing to substain themselves - now the environment that has sustained us to this point is rusting into dust. As for the people - some still have the glue, others hang on to the hope and knowledge. The story is still working on changes - seeking chances. I will enable the best of what I can reach. Love still has a role - it strives, we toil. Another day to be decided - even another day to allow us to decide - to change. It's being Human...
AlphaSight.com / Brad Michal Moore / American Artist
