Kathy Moore’s Life Is an Assemblage

Anderson Artists Guild member Kathy Moore has relished every stage of her life.

She grew up in Alabama, married young, and then traveled the world as a military wife, from California to Florida to Japan. She moved every three to four years, gave birth to her second child in Okinawa, and enjoyed the close-knit communities wherever she lived.

When her husband retired early, they moved to Anderson, where Moore was very involved in her kids’ lives. During their high school years at Hanna, she helped with the speech and debate team, coached the golf team, and taught Strategies for Success.

At age 40, Moore returned to school for an art education degree at Anderson University, where she had a full ride on a golf scholarship, having played competitively since age nine.

Since graduating in 2004, she has taught art at Hanna, where she enjoys coming up with such creative projects as making larger-than-life food out of felt. For the past four years, she has spearheaded an annual nontraditional fashion show fundraiser (hosted by the Anderson Arts Center) in which the students use unconventional recycled materials to create wearable art. “We’ve sold out each year and raised over $10,000 for the department,” she said. Moore’s accomplishments were recognized last year with the South Carolina Art Education Association’s Mary Whyte Art Educator Award.

Her own artistic focus sharpened about eight years ago after an encaustic workshop in Asheville. “I fell in love with encaustic but didn’t really love what artists were doing with it in the workshop,” she said. “I went home and experimented. What if I poured it in a drawer?” A long-time collector of old things, from cash register numbers to rusted hardware and door pulls, she started putting different items together into what she didn’t yet know to call “assemblages.”

Sometimes she starts with an idea or a quotation, often something whimsical. But her most celebrated piece is a memorial to a friend who had dementia. Titled She Had Holes in Her Memory, it uses old photos and old canvas/muslin strips as symbols of the friend’s memories.

Another piece features a metal dress of wire over a nest, symbolizing the protective measures taken by mothers.

Moore is drawn to working in threes or in odd numbers. “It’s definitely about composition,” she said. “Sometimes it’s the object itself or the color or the way paint is chipped on it. It’s very intuitive.”

For more information about Moore, visit http://www.kathymooreart.com/.