Conversation with Matthew Moore

Matthew Moore has been making land art that depicts the transference of farmland to suburban development, specifically, his own family farm of four generations. Using growing crops as his media, he has made large models in the remaining family grain fields of the houses and subdivisions that are taking the place of the farm, as the land is gradually sold off to builders. Soon, he will have no land left to document this change. The farm will be suburbia.

Matt, you were in an exhibition a year ago at ASU Art Museum that presented artists whose topic is living in Phoenix --New American City: Artists Look Forward. What was it like for you?

It was a great experience for me. Exposure there brought me to Lisa Sette Gallery (in Scottsdale). Because of the ASU show, I will be at the Walker Art Center in February (in the group show Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes). John Spiak and Heather Lineberry are so supportive, and are responsible for the majority of my work getting out. There were so many issues to consider--the border, suburban sprawl, relations with Mexico. As an artist you have to travel in the community.

What has your work been about since that exhibit?

I don't like being pigeon-holed. Everyone wants me to make more earthworks. We just lost 3/4 of a mile of farmland that we have rented for decades, to a developer that is putting down an Automall, and a Target Superstore, so I don't have any land anymore. Last summer, I did Mirage, which involved going to the desert by Tonapah, about 50 miles west of Phoenix. I made a cul-de sac out of mirrorized mylar. The silver reflection from the mylar is a reference to the water in an oasis, but also to a mirage--illusion. The process with mylar was a way to use some ideas in other means than what I had been doing with crops on the farm.

Tell me about the split-screen video project, Concerning Development. You placed video of scenes in the Lousiana gulf after the hurricane next to imagery of houses being built around Phoenix. The result is eery.

I did a project in Gulf Port, Louisiana after Katrina, that compared development to a hurricane. I was planning on doing something else, but ended up comparing the video I had taken of the desolation after the hurricane hit to building in suburban developments in Phoenix. It's such a huge machine, development. Seeing what you have worked on for years wiped out in a few weeks. What will happen after the next disaster?

Your art is on one hand, a drawn out project on the land, but again, it is the photograph of the project in the gallery. But the various aspects of your practise seem to have a coherency that goes beyond merely documentating land-based art. How did that happen?

My father is a pilot, as was my grandfather before him. It's a way to see agriculture by other means, a way that most people don't have the ability to. I hope I present the situation in a way that people can understand. The whole agricultural footprint is based on the idea that you can't critique what others are doing without understanding your own impact.

We live on the edge of the White Tanks, (White Tank Regional Park) and now there is a Del Web development in the desert where creosote could hardly grow. It's hard to get into the resources argument against development--there is a huge aquifer here. But, I worked with archaeologists, Soil Systems, in downtown Phoenix, who taught me a lot about the Pre-Columbian Indians who lived here, who out-farmed themselves. Why should we believe that we won't do it here again?

Phoenix is a great place to study sustainability. It's like a laboratory. We've been talking to architects. The creosote plant spaces itself so that it can expand during times of water, and contract in dry times. Could we make a house that would contract in the summer and expand in the winter? What would it look like? Could we do the same thing with a planned community?

We have about two years left here in Goodyear. Will we continue farming, move out to Palo Verde to find more land? I don't know. I don't think I'm a great farmer, like my father, but farming is a part of my life.

Now, we keep a little CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), but we don't really know our consumers. But there are times when I drop off a bag of potatoes, and they say this is the best I've ever had--that's a lot more gratifying than selling art. What will my art be when I don't have the farm? Will I grow wheat on skyscrapers?

Afterwards-

Matthew Moore is one of fifity-two national artists receiving support this year from Creative Capitol, the artist support organization. From the Creative Capitol press release-

Lifecycles: Reinterpreting The American Produce Market is a site-specific
installation in a commercial supermarket. Moore will reconfigure a produce section at the Yourland grocery store in Phoenix, positioning it as a point of mediation between farm and consumer. The installation will include LCD monitors that show short films of the time-lapsed lifecycles of vegetables placed above those items where they are sold, as well as audio captured from the farm where the produce is grown. A website linked to the project will provide downloadable audio and video podcasts. A fourth generation farmer whose land is currently being encroached upon by suburban sprawl, Moore’s goal is to reconnect consumers to their local geographies and the life cycles of the earth and its produce.

Matthew Moore has exhibited extensively in the U.S., from the Armory Center in Pasadena, CA, to Mass MoCA in North Adams, MA. In the U.S., Metropolis Magazine, Architecture, and Dwell magazines have included his work. In Europe, he was featured in Mark Magazine, Dazed and Confused, and the book Phoenix: 21st Century City, published by Booth-Clibborn Editions. While in Phoenix, he was awarded the Arizona Arts Commission’s Project Grant. He received
his MFA from San Francisco State University in 2003.

Matthew Moore's websight is urbanplough.com