“My senior year, Dr. Regina Colston told me, ‘Alabama red clay is rich with the blood of your ancestors.’ Before that, I wasn’t really proud to be from Alabama. I remember driving to Philadelphia and leaving when it was muddy. There was a group of guys around the car, and they would say, ‘What’s that stuff on your car?’ I said, ‘That’s Alabama red clay; the soil is red. Not all of it, but where I live.’ They were fascinated by it, and I remembered her statement. When I would travel or move other places, I always took with me a vial of red clay to remind me. Several years ago, they were renovating something in Huntsville, and I went down to look at the area for doing a mural. They had this clay on the ground that probably in the last century hadn’t seen rain. It was swirling around our feet like ghosts. I gathered up some in a little container. I started playing around with it with water because I knew how it would dye your clothes. I liked the way it looked and felt on paper. That’s what started the Alabama Red Clay paintings. The idea that I’m actually painting with this clay and when you think about blood, the component being iron, in this red clay what makes it red is the iron oxide present. So, really, it is like the blood of my ancestors. I get a chance to take this stuff up, resurrect it from the ground, something that people disdain for the most part, especially builders, and now, it gets to hang on museum walls and speak back to the people.” – John “Jahni” Moore of Huntsville

John “Jahni” Moore says resurrection, revival and restoration are cornerstones of his art. (Tamika Moore / People of Alabama)

Moore says his calling found him.

“I’ve always been a child of nature. I’ve always loved learning things, and being from the South contributes to my being a storyteller. I found that I told stories better through images. I began to do that for years before I even realized that doing art was a thing. I ended up majoring in art. My sophomore year, I looked in a school catalog, Alabama A&M University, and I saw a course called African American Art and it called me. I started learning about Samella Lewis, and people like Dana Chandler, especially Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Alma Thomas. All of a sudden, there was purpose behind my passion. I wasn’t just copying images from Greek mythology; now my work had a purpose. It had a social action, something to go out and do. Now, I can see how the work could work and that’s when I began to understand what it means to be an artist. My work is to impart life. You talk about words like resurrection, revival, restoration; those are the cornerstones of my work. It’s all about those things.”

See Moore’s work on his website and on Instagram.

These are the faces and stories of people from all walks of life who call Alabama home. People of Alabama is a Red Clay Media and Alabama News Center partnership.