Artist Info: Nate Moore
Bio
Nate Moore is a self-taught artist and Atlanta transplant. He was born in 1978 and grew up in Russellville, Arkansas, a bucolic town nestled in the Arkansas River Valley an hour north of Little Rock and home to the largest nuclear power plant in the South. Moore embarked on a career in art and shortly after totaling his 1979 model Pontiac Firebird in front of Little Rock pharmaceutical magnate Jennings Osborne’s house ten years ago. The artist admits if he hadn’t of crashed that car, he would’ve never relocated to the capitol city, where his mother worked as art director for the Arkansas Art Center.
Statement
My work with origami expresses my need to bring order and meaning to randomness. When I see the formations pointing skyward, I imagine the jets poised to launch in an exodus toward a utopia in which humanity is just and beautiful. Although the jets make sense en masse, each as an individual has a single and unique identity represented by its pattern and color. However, the jet’s shape, rather than its individual design, brings uniformity and camaraderie to each formation.
The thousands of origami jets I fold are done in a technique that my older sister taught me during my childhood. The paper that I fold comes from various found and discarded sources, such as magazines, old science books, and technical how-to manuals. I flip through each source, removing only the pages that have an interesting or striking design element. Sometimes I feel a strange sadness for the books and magazines that get destroyed for the sake of my art, but I have to remember that these sources will most likely be destroyed anyway. The negative space between the jets reveals the shape of an inverted jet and reminds me of all of the books I’ve dissected. I look at the formations as a whole, and in the negative space I see a fleet of phantom jets, pointing downward, representing the jets that could have been, the pages that I didn’t choose, and the shells of the books I leave behind.
Artist's CV
Solo Exhibitions:
2006 Found and Folded; Get This! Gallery, Atlanta, GA
2005 War and Health; Get This! Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2007, From A Thousand Pages...; Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2007, Affair at the Jupiter Hotel, Portland Art Fair, Portland, OR
2006, Pen Pal, collaborative mail art exhibition, first edition; Get This! Gallery, Atlanta, GA
2006, Wigwam Show; Old 4th Ward, Atlanta, GA (Curated by Scott Ingram)
2005, Toy Stories; Yo Yo Gallery, Atlanta, GA
2005, Aurora Coffee, Virginia Highlands, Atlanta, GA
2005, Opening exhibition for Get This! Gallery
Charitable Events:
2006, Art Papers Art Auction
2005, Pin-Up Show, Museum of Modern Art Georgia
2005, Art Papers Art Auction