Red Clay Journey Writings

For ages humanity has marked the universe with intention. Out of the red earth mother sprang the manifestation of hopes and dreams fathered by vision and purpose. This red earth, terra rosa, is baptized in the essence of those gone before. Rich with the blood of ancestral outpouring. This red hued clay, bound together with sweat and tears stretches out to form the foundation of our rising.  She is the bedrock of our going forth. Daily she is churned up by the very machinery she gave birth to. She holds the DNA of our development, the unfolding of our days and the seers of our future. Let us tread on purpose, this is hallowed ground. So let us put aside those things that divide us and walk on familial paths hewn out of possibilities.  We are one earth and soil laced with blood, bone, rivers, foliage, and slivers of rock.  Let us honor our earth mother because she feeds us all and is the firmament beneath all that we are, have, and do. 
 

As an undergrad, I was told by a university professor that my “success is inevitable. This Alabama red clay is rich with the blood or your ancestors.”  That quote inspired me.  Red clay soil has been with me wherever I’ve moved over the course of my life. Eventually it guided me back to these red-clayed roots of my Alabama rising.  Red clay was the pathway of my childhood. I’ve dyed fabrics with red clay, tinted wood, made pots, eaten it, used it as a mud mask, had mud/dirt fights, and made bricks. This red clay that caked on our shoes, stained our clothes, and the bottoms of our feet has taken on a powerful significance as it relates to my story and ancestral unfolding.  I found that I could sculpt the unforgiving substance with water and brushes to build space on flat surface. The clay responds very different from paints in that I mix the dry with the wet directly on the surface of the paper.  The permanence is supreme. The paper is dyed by the iron oxides in the soil. The nature of red clay gives me the feeling that I’m painting with a living substance.
 

“We are linked by blood, and blood is memory without language.” Joyce Carol Oates 

And that I receive as the truth that drives my work.  Iron oxide gives the clay its red coloring. Iron is the essential element for blood production. Blood is the sacred force in man and beast – the ultimate sacrificial substance, representing life itself. Blood is a charged element that symbolically marks my work. Iron is present in blood and as oxides in the clay. Iron, also present in much of my work was used in building material, tools, and shackles. Iron serves as a viable conductor. Ancestors spilled their lifeblood from the womb of the mother to the altars of this southern soil. My work honors the life/clay/blood connection. Sacrifices activate the divine. The divine is the source of re-memberance, resurrection, redemption, and restoration. My artwork operates as a sacrament on those pillars, an invocation to reconnect to the sanctity of life. This is blood work.

John “Jahni” Moore