Meet Alan Moore of The Moore Family Folk Art in SW Denver

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alan Moore.

Alan was born in Montgomery, Alabama and grew up the son of an Air Force officer. The Moores traveled all over the States and in Europe. In his teens, Alan’s family moved to the Panhandle of Florida, where his father retired from military service.

As a child and teen, Alan’s favorite classes in school were art, drafting, and shop. In his younger years, it was not rare for Alan to commandeer trash and other objects laying around the house to construct upcycled sculptures and other forms of practical art. He has always loved working with his hands.

Alan’s southern folk art had its early beginnings over 25 years ago as a high school art assignment. His art teacher introduced the class to different primitive artists in history and had them create several pieces of their own. That same year, Alan was introduced to Jasper Jones and fell in love with his work. Alan’s first two works were watercolor on rice paper and acrylic on recycled pegboard.

Alan attended the University of Florida after high school and studied construction management. Alan put aside any serious focus on art for more than 10 years as he studied, married Lori, and started a family.

During their 20 years of marriage, Lori and Alan have moved back and forth between Florida and Colorado. During a 2004 summer-long stay in Estes Park, Colorado, Alan, inspired by his surroundings and a longing to create again, broke his 10-year lull from art and staring creating again. After that summer in the mountains, Alan experienced a revival of sorts and began, like many great southern folk artists before him, painting on anything he put his hands on weathered woods, rusty metal, old furniture, etc. Recycled, salvaged, and upcycled materials have been Alan’s medium from his childhood, and has matured into his own style of southern folk and outsider art.

Over the last 10 years, Alan’s folk art has evolved from painted work to almost paintless works, using a wide variety of salvaged materials: 100-year-old pianos, roof metals, vintage bottle caps, steel soda cans, river-sunk driftwoods, antiques, farm equipment, and so much more.

Alan has also begun involving his children in his art world. His daughters, Isabella (18) and Emma (16), have gone from helpers at art festivals and in the studio to budding artists selling their own art across the nation. The girls also teach recycled art classes to kids their own age. Isabella and Emma are now fully engaged in what the Moores call “The Moore Family Folk Art.” Alan’s boys, Aidan (13), Liam (11), and Kian (8), are great helpers and are starting to dabble in the folk art world.

The Moores strive to promote family-based creativity and environmental stewardship through art classes, exhibits, festivals, and speaking engagements.

You can find the Moores’ work in galleries, restaurants, and at events in Colorado and Florida. From these states, Moore has established a national audience for their work.

Has it been a smooth road?
I would say the struggle is always finding the balance between keeping a corporate job (Alan works in construction management full time), doing art part-time, and spending plenty of quality time with the family. As a family of seven, we can often be going in seven different directions. The strength of our business is the quality of relationships we have as a family unit.

Also, as part-time artists, we can often see full-time artists gain notoriety and financial prosperity quicker since that is a career they are fully devoted to. It takes patience to slowly grow a business – especially a creative business.

It takes rejection of your work to push you to innovate and get even more creative in style, materials, production.

Overall we have learned to be very optimistic in our artistic journey. smooth roads make for bad art. Rough roads with a positive attitude are reflected in all we make.

We’d love to hear more about what you do.
We are a family that makes art together. We use primarily upcycled materials – vintage 1970s beer and soda cans, salvaged woods, and bottle caps dating from 1915-2019. We keep 1000s of linear feet of wood in our studio, over 6000 vintage cans, and over 250000 bottle caps.

Currently, we sell our work in 8 different states – about 16 different shops/galleries. States we are currently in FL, GA, CO, IL, TX, CA, VA, WV – We ship our work all over the nation from our studio. We have had work shipped all the way to Hong Kong and Australia.

Often artists (or being an artist) is a very individual endeavor. The Moores work at a team. Each piece that is made in our studio is created by at least three of us. Each of us has a roll in the creative process. This provides natural mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities every day. Each of the Moore kids gets to experience entrepreneurship on the daily. Not only do the kids learn how to be creative but are learning critical life and business skills each day.

We set ourselves apart from other artists (folk, outsider, upcycled) by the selection of our materials. Nothing we work with can be purchased at the local craft store. All our materials are salvaged – dumpsters, junkyards, side of the road – or purchased (our vintage materials) from collectors and estates. Half of the time spent on a piece of art is the long journey of collecting the right materials.

Each piece we make is one of a kind and unique. There is not another like another in the universe. We do not make reproductions or prints.

We take materials that would typically be discarded and tossed in a landfill and give them new life.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Denver is very very supportive of the arts – performance, visual, music. And the surrounding mountain towns are very supportive of the arts.

Denver has so many great opportunities for visual artists – galleries, shops, cafes, coffee houses, restaurants festivals, and markets. So many ways to get your work out there.

Starting out as an artist? Here is some advise- We have been at this for a decade. My advice is. 1. create a solid, quality product, that has some unique features to it. 2. partner with local companies to sell you work – then expand nationally – Local partnerships have been the key to us growing our business. 75% of our sale come from our partnerships with shops and galleries. 3. always sell online and keep an online presence to reach customers in your city and nation and internationally.

Pricing:

• general art price range $35-$2000
• we accept credit card, venmo, PayPal, and cash

Contact Info:

• Website: www.themoorefamilyfolkart.com
• Email: folkartistalanmoore@gmail.com

Image Credit:
Press Photos of Alan, Isabella, and Emma

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