On Accessing Art as an Amateur: Dominique Moody’s “Ancestral Praise House” (1996)

Photo Courtesy of artist website.

Back in December of last year, I visited one of my favorite local museums — CAAM and found God in in the Dust My Broom: Southern Vernacular from the Permanent Collection via a intricate piece by artist Dominique Moody. Completed in 1996, her “Ancestral Praise House” piece was inspired by small wooden structures where Gullah women, people of the sea lands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia who were descendants of slaves, used to pray.

~

Back in the 90’s Moody and her sister drove to South Carolina visiting several Gullah communities along the coast speaking with the griots of their communities and also meeting different artists. The experiences from this trip helped inspire this unique piece laden with many different materials. The structure itself is a house with steps leading up with a pit at the bottom. It is a piece cobbled together and at first glance it may look like disorganization to some but let me assure you Ancestral Praise House is worthy of a second look. Even a third. A fourth.

Mosaic like pieces of glass adorn each side that creates an image that can’t be confined to just one side of the little house. The more and more I looked at it, the more detail it revealed: I first thought of houses and structures with four walls. We build up…