Carrie Moyer (born 1960) is an American painter and writer living in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, New York. Moyer's paintings and public art projects have been exhibited both in the US and Europe since the early 1990s, and she is best known for her 17-year agitprop project, Dyke Action Machine! with photographer Sue Schaffner. Moyer's work has been shown at the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932; the first biennial was held in 1973. It is considered ...

, the

Museum of Arts and Design The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the ...

, and the Tang Museum, and is held in the permanent collections of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

. She serves as the director of the graduate MFA program at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

, and has contributed writing to anthologies and publications like ''

The Brooklyn Rail ''The Brooklyn Rail'' is an American publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics, based in Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and ...

'' and ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably ...

.''

Early life and education

Carrie Moyer was born in

Detroit, Michigan Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

in 1960. She was exposed to art at an early age and frequently visited the

Detroit Institute of Arts The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is a museum institution located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan. It has list of largest art museums, one of the largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it cove ...

with her mother. In 1969, her family moved to the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...

and lived in Oregon, California, and Washington throughout the 1970s. Moyer became interested in

modern dance Modern dance is a broad genre of western concert dance, concert or theatrical dance which includes dance styles such as ballet, folk, ethnic, religious, and social dancing; and primarily arose out of Europe and the United States in the late 19th ...

and choreographers such as

Martha Graham Martha Graham (May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer, teacher and choreographer, whose style, the Graham technique, reshaped the dance world and is still taught in academies worldwide. Graham danced and taught for over s ...

as a child and briefly attended

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont, United States. Founded as a women’s college in 1932,

on a dance scholarship until a serious car accident forced her to quit. After one year at Bennington, she dropped out and moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

with her girlfriend, and took classes at the

Art Students League The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may study f ...

while working at

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across the United States. Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its B ...

. Moyer transferred to

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York. It has an additional campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The institute was founded in 18 ...

and graduated with her BFA in painting in 1985. While at Pratt, Moyer studied under artists Rudolf Baranik, Amy and Jenny Snider, Phoebe Helman, Jack Sonnenberg, and Ernest Benkert. She largely produced abstract paintings during this time, and was inspired by painters such as

Lee Krasner Lenore "Lee" Krasner (born Lena Krassner; October 27, 1908 – June 19, 1984) was an American painter and visual artist active primarily in New York whose work has been associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. She received her ear ...

Bill Jensen Bill Jensen (born 1945) is an American abstract painter. Education Jensen was born in 1945 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He studied at University of Minnesota, where he earned his BFA in 1968 and his MFA in 1970. He has lived and worked in New York ...

, Elizabeth Murray, and

Katherine Porter Katherine Porter (1941 or 1944 – April 22, 2024) was an American visual artist. Porter is considered one of the most important contemporary artists associated with Maine. She resisted categorization. Through the medium of painting and drawing ...

. She also worked as an intern for '' Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics'' as an undergraduate''.'' In 1990, she received her MA in Computer Graphics from the

New York Institute of Technology The New York Institute of Technology (NYIT or New York Tech) is a Private university, private research university, research university founded in 1955. It has two main campuses in New York (state), New York—one in Old Westbury, on Long I ...

and an MFA from the

Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts is a graduate program associated with Bard College that grants Master of Fine Arts degrees. Founded in 1981, Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts (otherwise known as the Bard MFA program) is a nontradi ...

Bard College Bard College is a private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains within the Hudson River Historic District ...

in 2001. She also studied at the

Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture is an artists residency located in Madison, Maine, just outside of Skowhegan. Every year, the program accepts online applications from emerging artists from November through January, and selects 65 ...

in 1995.

Career

Graphic design

After graduating from Pratt in 1985, Moyer worked as a graphic designer for various advertising agencies, where she first developed skills with computer graphic software like

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe for Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editin ...

. At the same time, she became more involved with lesbian and gay rights movements in New York after learning about

ACT UP AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, ...

and

Gran Fury Emerging from ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) in 1988, Gran Fury was an AIDS activist artist collective from New York City consisting of 11 members including: Richard Elovich, Avram Finkelstein, Amy Heard, Tom Kalin, John Lindell, Lor ...

through

Avram Finkelstein Avram Finkelstein is an American artist, writer, gay rights activist and member of the AIDS art collective Gran Fury. Finkelstein describes himself as a " red diaper baby", raised by leftist parents who encouraged him to develop an interest in ...

, and began to apply her graphic design skills to her activism. Moyer began creating

agitprop Agitprop (; from , portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', "propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in the Soviet Union where it referred to popular media, such as literatu ...

in the early 1990s, studying historical movements like

Constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in the Soviet Union in t ...

and Situationism and artists like

Ad Reinhardt Adolph Friedrich Reinhardt (December 24, 1913 – August 30, 1967) was an American abstract painter and art theorist active in New York City for more than three decades. As a theorist he wrote and lectured extensively on art and was a ...

. Throughout the 1990s, she created posters, pamphlets, and graphics for various lesbian and gay activist groups in New York City, including

Queer Nation Queer Nation is an LGBTQ activist organization founded in March 1990 in New York City, by HIV/AIDS Activism, activists from AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, ACT UP. The four founders were outraged at the escalation of Violence against LGBT peopl ...

, the

Lesbian Avengers The Lesbian Avengers was an American direct action group. The group was founded in 1992 in New York City by six individuals: Ana Maria Simo, Anne Maguire, Anne-Christine D'Adesky, Marie Honan, Maxine Wolfe, and Sarah Schulman. The organizatio ...

, the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization, and the New York City Anti-Violence Project. After discovering the Lesbian Avengers at the New York City Gay Pride March in 1992, Moyer designed the logo for the group. The logo would be the subject of controversy almost 30 years later in 2021, when Gap used the logo on a t-shirt after purchasing the design from Moyer for $7,000, which she donated to the

Lesbian Herstory Archives The Lesbian Herstory Archives (LHA) is a New York City-based archive, community center, and museum dedicated to preserving history of lesbianism, lesbian history, located in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The Archives contain the world's largest collection ...

. Some founding members of the Lesbian Avengers, such as

Sarah Schulman Sarah Miriam Schulman (born July 28, 1958) is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a fellow of the New York ...

, criticized the commodification of the movement, and the shirt was ultimately discontinued.

Dyke Action Machine!

In 1991, Moyer and photographer Sue Schaffner founded Dyke Action Machine! (DAM!), a queer interventionist public art project informed by Appropriationist artists like

Barbara Kruger Barbara Kruger (born January 26, 1945) is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her visual word art that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative ca ...

Jenny Holzer Jenny Holzer (born July 29, 1950) is an American neo-conceptual artist, based in Hoosick, New York. Her work focuses on the delivery of words and ideas in public spaces and includes large-scale installations, advertising billboards, projectio ...

, and

Sherrie Levine Sherrie Levine (born 1947) is an American photographer, painter, and conceptual artist. Some of her work consists of exact photographic reproductions of the work of other photographers such as Walker Evans, Eliot Porter and Edward Weston. Ea ...

. It began as a working group of the activist organization,

, which Moyer felt neglected lesbian issues, and evolved into a stand-alone agitprop duo. DAM! would launch artistic campaigns in which Moyer and Schaffner would wheat-paste roughly 5,000 posters featuring lesbian imagery in diverse, highly trafficked neighborhoods, with the goal of dissecting and critiquing mainstream and commercial culture. They frequently repackaged popular and recognizable logos, designs, and slogans to package a lesbian aesthetic, and in using public advertising space to subvert heterosexual norms, created what Jayne Caudwell refers to as a "micro dykescape". In 1994, DAM! began focusing on digital techniques and mediums to avoid commodification and assimilation, using domains like Dyke TV and Girlie Network to create interactive narratives and artwork. Moyer and Schaffner produced over 15 projects during their collaboration as DAM!, which came to an end in 2008 after 17 years.

Painting and teaching

Moyer returned to painting in the early 1990s, and continued to explore themes of lesbian identity and sexuality in her work. Her work as a graphic designer continued to influence her painting, and she explored abstraction by adding tactile and spatial effects to her paintings, notably glitter beginning in the late 1990s. In 2003, CANADA Gallery in New York City began representing Moyer and frequently exhibited her work in solo and group shows. In 2015, she left the gallery to be represented by DC Moore Gallery. In 2004, her abstract paintings were shown alongside

Sheila Pepe Sheila Pepe (born Morristown, New Jersey, 1959) is an artist and educator living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She is a prominent figure as a lesbian cross-disciplinary artist, whose work employs conceptualism, surrealism, and craft to address ...

's sculptures at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art; in 2020, the couple would again be the subject of a two-person exhibition, "Tabernacles for Trying Times," organized at the

Portland Museum of Art The Portland Museum of Art, or PMA, is the largest and oldest public art institution in Maine. Founded as the Portland Society of Art in 1882. It is located in the downtown area known as The Arts District in Portland, Maine. History The PMA use ...

in Maine and later traveling to the

in New York. In 2004, her work appeared in a group exhibition at Aljira: A Center for Contemporary Art alongside

Ellen Harvey Ellen Harvey (born 1967) is an American-British Conceptual art, conceptual artist known for her painting-based practice and site-specific works in installation, video, engraved mirrors, mosaic and glass.Huldisch, Henriette. "Tempting Failure,''E ...

, Chris Bors, and Richard Silberman. Moyer has taught at the

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly known as Cooper Union, is a private college on Cooper Square in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-s ...

Rhode Island School of Design The Rhode Island School of Design (RISD , pronounced "Riz-D") is a private art and design school in Providence, Rhode Island. The school was founded as a coeducational institution in 1877 by Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf, who sought to increase th ...

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

Tyler School of Art The Tyler School of Art and Architecture is part of Temple University, a large, urban, public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Tyler currently enrolls about 1,350 undergraduate students and about 200 graduate st ...

, Pratt Institute, and

Yale School of Art The Yale School of Art is the art school of Yale University. Founded in 1869 as the first professional fine arts school in the United States, it grants Master of Fine Arts, Masters of Fine Arts degrees to students completing a two-year course in g ...

. In 2011, Moyer joined the studio faculty of

, and became the co-director of its MFA program in 2021 alongside

Lisa Corinne Davis Lisa Corinne Davis is an American Visual arts, visual artist known for abstract paintings and works on paper that suggest maps and other encoded forms of knowledge.Wei, Lilly. "Lisa Corinne Davis at June Kelly," ''Art in America,'' February 2008 ...

. In 2011 and 2013, she received a MacDowell Fellowship. In 2013, Moyer received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

in painting, which allowed her to complete the work for a solo exhibition, "Pirate Jenny", which was shown at the Tang Museum,

Columbus College of Art and Design Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) is a Private college, private art school in Columbus, Ohio. It was founded in 1879 as the Columbus Art School and is one of the oldest private art and design colleges in the United States. Located in dow ...

, and

Savannah College of Art and Design Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) is a private art school with locations in Savannah, Georgia; Atlanta, Georgia; and Lacoste, France. It was founded in 1978 to provide degrees in programs not yet offered in the southeast of the United ...

. A piece from the show is also held in the permanent collection of the

. She has also had a solo exhibition, "Interstellar," at the

Worcester Art Museum The Worcester Art Museum houses over 38,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day and representing cultures from all over the world. The museum opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Its holdings include Roman mosaics, Europe ...

in 2012, and exhibited at

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution at 2201 Jackson Avenue in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in New York City, United States. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...

Weatherspoon Art Museum The Weatherspoon Art Museum is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in the southeast with a focus on American art. Its programming includes fifteen or more ...

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum at the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 Smithsonian Institution museums and one of three Smithsonian facili ...

, and Project Art Space in Dublin. Moyer's work was included in the 2017

, and described as a "standout" by ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

.'' In October 2019, Moyer was elected as a full member of the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Frederick Styles Agate, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, an ...

Writing

Moyer's writing has appeared in '' Art in America'', ''

'', ''

Modern Painters Modern may refer to: History *Modern history ** Early Modern period ** Late Modern period *** 18th century *** 19th century *** 20th century ** Contemporary history * Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century Philosophy ...

'', the ''

Brooklyn Rail ''The Brooklyn Rail'' is an American publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics, based in Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and ...

'' and other publications. Since 1997, her essays have also been included in a range of anthologies – from ''Queers in Space: Communities, Public Spaces and Sites of Resistance'' (Bay Press, 1997) to ''The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists'' (

Michelle Grabner Michelle Grabner (born 1962 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin) is an artist, curator, and critic based in Wisconsin. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1996. She has curated sever ...

and

Mary Jane Jacob Mary Jane Jacob is an American curator, writer, and educator from Chicago, Illinois. She is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is the former Executive Director of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies. She has held posts as ...

s, editors; University of Chicago Press, 2010). She also contributed to

Sharon Louden Sharon Louden (born 1964) is an American visual artist, known for her abstract and whimsical use of the line. Her minimalist paintings and drawings have subsequently transformed over the years into other media (animation, sculpture, and installa ...

's ''The Artist as Culture Producer: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life.''

Work

For the past two decades, Moyer’s paintings have merged abstract aesthetics and political imagery. Complex and seductive paintings layer vividly colored and textured biomorphic forms with a range of historical, stylistic and physical references that include Color Field, Social Realist, and

Surrealist Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

paintings, 1960s and ’70s counter culture graphics, 1970s

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

art, and bodily forms and fluids. Moyer often works on the floor, pouring, rolling, stippling, mopping, and hand-working the paint, as well as adding sections of glitter. Critic Martha Schwendener has written about Moyer's paintings: :"Painting is a neurotically self-conscious medium—it's always looking over its shoulder, responding to earlier eras and earlier ideas. Carrie Moyer puts that self-consciousness at the center of her work. But where mash-ups of different periods and styles have become popular with post-postmodern painters (and often end up looking like conceptual train wrecks), her canvases are cool, seamless—almost alchemical." By juxtaposing the ancient, modern, and contemporary, Moyer rips images out of their old contexts and circulates them in a new one—"cross-wiring," she calls it. Slipping between abstract and representational, the raw canvases are built up with strata of translucent and opaque color, positive and negative shapes, and solids and silhouettes that reference different historical periods: ancient fertility figures with bulging hips; vases with breasts circling their perimeters; murky blobs that recall the paintings of biomorphic Surrealism. These juxtapositions make a commentary on an unsettling subtext here, a suggestion of the way women have served as talismanic muse-objects in past art instead of intelligent innovators.

Personal life

In 1995, Moyer met artist Sheila Pepe at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. They began dating in 1998 and were married in 2015. Since 2018, she has worked out of a studio in the

Brooklyn Army Terminal The Brooklyn Army Terminal (BAT) is a large warehouse complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York City. The site occupies more than between 58th and 63rd Streets west of 2nd Avenue, on Brooklyn's western shore. The complex was originally used ...

in Sunset Park.

Awards

* 1999: Elaine de Kooning Memorial Fellowship * 1999: Peter Norton Family Foundation Project Grant * 2000:

Creative Capital Creative Capital is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in New York City that supports artists across the United States through funding, counsel, gatherings, and career development services. Since its founding in 1999, Creative Capital has co ...

Award * 2009:

Joan Mitchell Foundation Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

Painters and Sculptors Grant * 2009:

Anonymous Was A Woman Award The Anonymous Was A Woman Award is a grant program for women artists who are over 40 years of age, in part to counter sexism in the art world. It began in 1996 in direct response to the National Endowment for the Arts' decision to stop funding i ...

* 2011:

Yaddo Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March ...

Residency * 2011 and 2013:

MacDowell Colony MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The program was founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDo ...

Fellowship: * 2013: Guggenheim Fellowship

Selected writings

* "Carrie Moyer." Grabner, Michelle and Mary Jane Jacobs, eds. ''The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists.'' Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2010 * Moyer, Carrie
"So Appealing, So Different: Carrie Moyer on the Women of Pop,"
Artforum, April 2010 * Moyer, Carrie
"Alina Szapocznikow: My American Dream,"
The Brooklyn Rail, October 2010 * Moyer, Carrie
"Maria Lassnig: The Pitiless Eye,"
Art in America, January 2009 * Moyer, Carrie
"Dona Nelson: Brain Stain,"
The Brooklyn Rail, October 2006