Sheila Pepe and Carrie Moyer, Special Lecture 2013

Sheila Pepe interviews Carrie Moyer about her life growing up in the Pacific Northwest, her academic training (Pratt Institute, Bennington College, New York Institute of Technology, Bard College, Skowhegan), and how all of these experiences shaped her artistic practice. Moyer talks about the many different interests that she has developed from her work as an activist, a painter, and in graphic design. For Moyer, graphic design was something that supported her studio practice, while also teaching her to understand the power of the medium. Moyer sees graphic design as a method to create quick seduction in advertising and entice the viewer to stay with an image. Mainstream messages operate through this medium. Moyer then speaks about her many years as an activist, including working in the collective Dyke Action Machine. Topics that Moyer seeks to bring into her studio practice include, but are not limited to: gay politics, the history of design, counter cultural work, painting, and the long trajectory of protest art. 

Moyer then reflects on her relationship with Pepe. She discusses the challenges of having an artist partner, the way that competition can become present in the relationship, and the effort required to overcome competition. Moyer tells Pepe about her interest in learning new ideas, especially learning from her students. For Moyer, teaching is a political act. She is constantly thinking about the type of information she communicates to the next group of artists, what their intentions are as artists, how they can create a response based on that intention, and the values that she then imparts on them. Moyer also reflects on her writing practice, where she tries to bring historically-underrepresented or underhistoricized people to light. Moyer hopes that this historical excavation creates a destabilized space that slows the reader down. Moyer ends her conversation with Pepe by discussing the differences between graphic design and painting. Moyer is not interested in telling the viewer a narrative of how something is made, but is instead in an inevitability that appears. Ultimately, just like graphic design, painting has a utility: to make a viewer pause and develop a different consciousness about an idea.