‘Urban’ renewal

Artist to share vision of popular culture

Thursday, Jan. 18, 2007

Click here to enlarge this photo Photo courtesy of McDaniel College ‘‘Our Radio” by Ayanah Moor.

‘‘Everyone wants to be ‘ghetto’, but nobody wants to be poor,” she said in a recent artist statement.

Moor and her fresh ideas on popular culture will be showcased in the exhibit ‘‘Our Radio is Bigger than Yours” to be held Jan. 23 through Feb. 16 at McDaniel College’s Esther Prangley Rice Gallery in Westminster. An opening reception for her work will be held from 7 until 9 p.m. Tuesday at the gallery.

‘‘Her ideas will appeal and intrigue the students,” said Steven Pearson, art director at McDaniel who first met Moor at an artist residency program in Vermont.

‘‘Her work is about her identity, which I thought would be educational for the students,” he said.

For the show, Moor will display 12 pieces created with an ink jet and using exaggerated, playful colors. The display will be banner-like with unique frames made for prints loosely based on photographs Moor took of herself and her friends around the city.

‘‘I’m hoping it comes across as witty and thought provoking,” she said.

An artist for most of her life, Moor first became interested in popular culture in graduate school where she started studying the anti-bellum south period of the black face culture. A young black woman herself, Moor is part of the hip-hop generation and is ‘‘fascinated with the history of that,” she said.

She frequently uses different medium in her various works, such as digital prints or drawings and draws upon popular culture in music, movies and television.

Pearson said it was also Moor’s use of different medium that made him pursue her for an exhibit with McDaniel since he encourages his students to use various methods for their work.

An art teacher at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, Moor also exhibits her work in different venues across the United States, although she says she loves showing at universities best where she can engage students.

She is still busy creating her pieces for the McDaniel show, which she is looking forward to. So far, she’s done much of her work on the computer at home while watching music videos for inspiration.

‘‘The show is as much a play on the way ‘urban’ is used [as it is] playful about our interests in popular culture. This series is me having fun instead of being academic,” she said.