Today we’d like to introduce you to John “Jahni” Moore.
Hi John “Jahni”, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’ve always been interested in aesthetics even before I knew what it was. Growing up in the south, nature and the library were my go to spaces. There was a creek behind our house and that was my first real intro to the world of art … by way of divine connection. Animals, plants, the flowing water, the red clay mud, all laid out in an interactive palette. In school I became known as the boy who could draw. I took every chance I could get to go to the library. It was there that my world expanded beyond my neighborhood. When I graduated high school, I went to Alabama A&M University in Huntsville, AL where I earned my B.S. in Commercial Art and an M.Ed in Art Education. Later I earned my A. P. Art Certification from SCAD. Then my M.F.A. from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. That experience was my Mecca. Art has been my magic carpet ride. It’s taken me across this country and abroad – twice serving as Art Ambassador in Colombia, South America.
Growing up, saddled with the binary history of the American south, I was faced with the peculiar positionality of the “Black body” and its use and perception in history. In my work, I contend with varying dualities and how they serve to speak to the human condition and cosmic repositioning. Immersed in the craft, I took up the mantle of educator. As an educator, I taught art professionally from kindergarten to college in public and private sectors. I am vested in art as a discipline as an creative for life.
As a creative, my intent is to create a future construct with the timber of past and present material activated with imagination. I am a curator of experiences, an architect of a new reality where love, power, and the miraculous converge to manifest maximum wealth of body, mind, and spirit. My process emerges as paintings, drawings, assemblage, writing, and installation. I often make use of recycled southern elements utilized as charging agents in my work. The red clay is transubstantial as it is imbued with the blood of our ancestors. Therefore, I paint with life for life. The repurposing of these media speak to present issues in a type of social recycling. Art (A Resurrecting Truth) is my weapon of choice in the quest for liberation of life from any social or mental construct that binds us to anything less than our highest potential. My practice is situated on the pillars of revelation, resurrection, re-membering, revival, and the reclamation of a chosen, rather than an imposed reality, and resulting future. Life is the art.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
If NO had an echo, you would be hearing it in stereo right now. I made the statement earlier of this path being a magic carpet ride. That’ s not to say it hasn’t had its challenges. In the early years the financial struggle was the realest. Over time I began to learn to invest in myself and become as creative in business as I am with my media. The art is always ready, you just have to make sure that you package it in a way that prepares it to meet a world that will support it. Stay the course…
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am what I am, a creative spirit manifest in the flesh. Art is no longer just something I do. It’s the essence of what I am, in presence and future perfect tense. A. R. T. is an acronym for A Resurrecting Truth:whatever it is that brings one to life, not just living. I see my practice as an archetype of a Dr. Frankenstein. The art is that arch of electricity that emanates from the design and activates the potential in us. Seeing it that way elevates my creativity in a way that feels it in my psyche as the thing I am innately connected to like a lion to its roar or a cheetah to its speed. They’re what make the thing the crux of being and I use that, art for me, to activate, inspire, to in essence resurrect. In undergrad at Alabama A&M University, a professor told me that ” Your success is inevitable. This Alabama red clay is rich with the blood of your ancestors.” Those word ignited a fire that took time to catch but is now unquenchable. I use the red clay as a medium and a charging agent.As an undergrad, I was told by a university professor that my “success is inevitable. This Alabama red clay is rich with the blood or your ancestors.” That quote inspired me. The southern red clay soil has been with me wherever I’ve moved over the course of my life. Eventually it guided me back to the gallant south where I continue to discover the depths my roots. Red clay was the pathway of my childhood. I’ve dyed fabrics with red clay, tinted wood, made pots, eaten it, used it as a mud mask, had mud/dirt fights, and made bricks. This red clay that caked on our shoes, stained our clothes, and the bottoms of our feet has taken on a powerful significance as it relates to my story and ancestral unfolding. I found that I could sculpt the unforgiving substance with water and brushes to build space on a flat surface. The clay responds very different from paints in that I mix the dry with the wet directly on the surface of the paper. The permanence is supreme. The paper is dyed by the iron oxides in the soil. The nature of red clay gives me the feeling that I’m painting with a living substance.
“We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.” Joyce Carol Oates
And that I receive as the truth that drives my work. Iron oxide gives the clay its red coloring. Iron is the essential element for blood production. Blood is the sacred force in man and beast – the ultimate sacrificial substance, representing life itself. Blood is a charged element that symbolically marks my work. Iron is present in blood and as oxides in the clay. Iron, also present in much of my work was used in building material, tools, and shackles. Iron serves as a viable conductor.
Ancestors spilled their lifeblood from the womb of the mother to the altars of this southern soil. My work honors the life/clay/blood connection. Sacrifices activate the divine. The divine is the source of re-memberance, resurrection, redemption, and restoration. My artwork operates as a sacrament on those pillars, an invocation to reconnect to the sanctity of life. It’s carries a spiritual energy. This is blood work.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
First step is continue to do the work that will eventually evolve into your work. That work will open doors and bring visibility to your space. As a little skinny chocolate boy growing up broke in the deep south, art was never seen as something viable to do for real. Not as a career or anything serious. I continued to travel the path that never ceased to call out to me. Inevitably that path is going to cross with like minds and some of those like minds will have the ability to move your needle, take you closer to where you want to be. I think of artist/educator in particular who played that role for me. Kevin Cole is still a mentor. I met him at SCAD and he influence me to go to SAIC in Chicago. That trajectory led me to people like Theaster gates and Caulen Smith in Chicago, Hamza Walker out of LA, and meeting Kerry James Marshall, who is originally from the south. Birmingham, AL to be specific. There are many others but these are some that by direct contact, have had an impact on me in this phase of my career. The more I process forward (at times against the odds) the energy I generate that puts me where my intentions are. My key advice if I were the advice-giving type would be to continue, stay the course, and don’t hold back. Look within before you look outside of yourself. That’s where the key is that will open the doors…
Contact Info:
- Website: www.jahnitheartist.com
- Instagram: @jahnitheartist
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/john.j.moore.98
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-jahni-moore-ba477726/
- Other: blog www.afroblastik.com
