Creative Nourishment: b. Robert Moore's "In Loving Memory"

How the exhibit from the Des Moines Arts Center taught me to look closer

I gazed at a large scale mosaic in a gallery at the Des Moines Art Center when I heard my colleague’s voice behind me.

“Macey, are you an art person?”

I had to stop and consider the question. What does “being an art person” mean? I have no training in visual art. I can’t form a figure in any medium, although I’ve tried. I enjoy looking at art when I have the chance, but I don’t often seek it out.

“I’d like to be,” I responded.

My coworkers and I came to the center that day to experience b. Robert Moore’s “In loving Memory,” his collection within the long-running Iowa Artists Series at the center. The exhibition explores the ideas of legacy and memorialization, of both individuals and of our collective experiences, the dichotomies of which continue to shape contemporary life and conversations.

As we prepared to enter Moore’s exhibit, my colleague’s question prompted a more immediate thought about the ways I’ve been trying to show up to experience another’s creative work—with intention to strengthen those muscles that communicate and interact with the specific work an artist put in to express themselves and the wider concepts they felt called to interrogate. Those muscles that better see the presence of the artist within their work and better converse with that presence in more complex and deliberate ways. I want to approach work with eyes that search for texture, ears that listen for choices, and a heart that explores the layers of another person’s experience.

Where before, I encountered work to enjoy its beauty, I’m now working on encountering work to see more deeply what it’s saying about a specific world and why it’s saying it.

The complexity of Moore’s exploration of the Black experience in America engaged those muscles from the moment I stepped into the space. His work is filled with choices—how much the work would filter through his viewpoint, the ways that what appears in the work and what doesn’t appear in the work mold together to build layers within the story—and to notice those choices with more care allowed me to feel Moore’s heart more than I would have otherwise.

I’m learning that to truly see the concept of art and creativity and let it shape the world and my experience of it into a more elevated, pure form, I have to notice things.

This is a non-exhaustive list of the things I noticed from Moore’s collection that made me more vulnerable to the power of his work and helped me understand how to look closer: