The Wake

The war in Iraq, racism, placism, police brutality, the economy, prison, slavery, poverty, politics and the government all have at least one thing in common. They’re all garbage–at least according to one Minneapolis realist who deals with all that trash daily, in his front yard.

“It all started out as an issue of rage,” explains Andrew Moore, gazing at the web of old toys, rusting car parts, cages and collages carefully intertwined on his front lawn at the corner of 33rd and Bloomington. Moore’s sculpture, “The Web of Deception,” lovingly weaves rummaged objects together, each representing an inner city injustice or American policy, with plastic tubes.

Laced into the web, a baby doll painted black holds a gun and stands inside a clear plastic tube with a Confederate flag, to represent black-on-black violence.

To black-on-black crime’s left, is “The Impact of Drugs.” This installation shows a toy Hummer truck crashed into a golden dump truck. A toy police truck sits on top of the Hummer, with a sign proclaiming, “racial profiling.”

At the back center of the web, is the “Chamber of Execution,” inside which a bloody dummy rests with a gun in its head, draped underneath the American flag. Several plastic tubes, which Moore calls “Economic Bloodlines of Destruction,” flow into the Chamber. A poster of Tupac Shakur, a wooden slate with “unemployment” painted across it, and the writings of William Lynch adorn the chamber.

Moore has been tackling these, and other injustices, in his yard art for almost 10 years. His neighbors don’t mind the “garbage” in his yard, rather, most people really like it, he says. “A lot of people in my community are actually semi-illiterate… I needed to find something that everybody could identify with, so I started looking in garbage cans.” Some people even drop off interesting pieces of “junk” in his yard for him, he says.

Each spring Moore’s sculpture is completely different, but it always stems from the same source, and he continually updates the work throughout the summer. “I create my art out of anger at the realities I see everyday.” Moore, nearing 50, is now a father of five and has walked through his fair share of rage-provoking reality.

Today, Moore works at his longtime job, as a “bouncer” at a nearby Loaves and Fishes, a non-profit agency serving the hungry in the Twin Cities. He likes his job because it is one of the only places he can help people who are even less fortunate than him, he explains.

Moore grew up in Iowa and quickly followed his parents into the Black Panthers. At 16, after breaking into a house while armed, Moore ended up in prison for 10 years, spending six in solitary confinement. After prison, Moore became a boxer, but moved to Minneapolis in 1984 after losing a big match in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Because of his prison record, and aggressive nature, it was difficult to find and hold down a job.

He started sculpting after experiencing job discrimination. “People like to call me an artist,” Moore humbly acknowledges, “but I’m not sure if that’s the right word for me; I’m showing people what’s already there. I’m just a realist.”

Art became therapy, Moore explains, to deal with struggles he faces and sees in his neighborhood. “Rage is good if you can control it. But society has never given us, specifically black men, the tools to control rage.”

Moore tries to address rage through his artwork, he says. Through the intertwined representations of gangs, black-on-black crime, drug wars, the White House and economics, “I want young black men to see that it’s all part of this American system of oppression, and that we shouldn’t take part in it,” Moore explains.

“People either don’t understand these things, or they do but they become complacent,” Moore says. Shaking his head, he adds, “Americans like to complain. But mostly, they like to go to the plantation, and put in their hours for master. And then they like to come home and root for the Vikings.”

Moore, however, doesn’t advocate getting off of the couch to vote. “People are always so excited to be going to the polls,” Moore says with a laugh, “ Who are we going to vote for? Another same kind of devil, one that’s got money, has never struggled like you and I.”

“A lot of people blame everything on Bush, but for me Bush is just another part of the same puzzle… Racism, homelessness, police brutality, regentrification–all that stuff is stuff we’ve been bearing witness to a long time. It’s nothing Bush invented, and it’s nothing the next rich guy is going to care about,” Moore says before beginning a lengthy, impressively detailed and accurate account of U.S. history.

Until there emerges a candidate he can identify with, “I’ll keep on throwing my anger out the door, and putting it in my yard… I’m running out of yard though,” he says, glancing around. “But I just like to tell it like it is,” he says, excusing the space he’s used up, “If people can’t see that, it’s because they’re still blinded by the light.”

On second thought, maybe Moore is an artist. “Do you have to paint a pretty picture to be called an artist?” He asks, though we both know he won’t give me a chance to answer. “We run from reality because it’s not pretty. My purpose in life is to be this type of an artist, a reality artist.”

Moore’s “Web of Deception,” is on the corner of 33rd and Bloomington Ave, in south Minneapolis. He will begin taking the sculpture down after the first snow and will, hopefully, rebuild again next spring.