Sam Moyer, Visiting Artist Lecture 2022

Sam Moyer gives a lecture at Skowhegan talking about her sculptures, installations, paintings, prints, and drawings. At the core of Moyer’s lecture is the idea of transformation; how can one make the photograph as a sculpture, the sculpture as photograph and how do we relate our work to the body and the space in order to let them be multiple things at once? Moyer is also interested in text, thinking about how to take a found object and translate it through writing, particularly poetry. Moyer reflects on what it means to unpack ideas of appropriation and other people’s images, and to choose images that work in a repetitive way in order to create more of an equality for the photograph among other materials. Moyer reminds the participants to try and give themselves credit for the work that they are doing. Moyer tells the participants that they will always be making choices and decisions that will help them figure out the composition and crops that are interesting to them. Moyer also states the importance of taking risks, respecting their work, and not to transfer ideas of self worth onto their work. Moyer then begins to talk about the theme of erosion in her work and the importance that this plays for her as an artist to understand how to take things apart in order to build something new and the power that this holds in revealing the mechanism of something. For Moyer, exploring erosion allows her to reflect on themes of gravity, time and the illusion of weightlessness vs weight. Moyer states that when she presents her paintings, she strives to create a feeling that the human can respond too and can relate to their body. Moyer then shifts gears and talks about the program she works on with her husband–artist Eddie Martinez– entitled Free Arts NYC which is a not-for-profit that works to empower youth in underserved communities through art and mentoring programs.