POMONA, Calif. — There’s no steeple out front, no rows of pews inside, not even so much as a crucifix on display.
Still, this cramped little art studio in the middle of what, until not very long ago, was a street with as many broken dreams as it has potholes, is the closest thing to paradise Bill Moore has found. It’s the place where the 60-year-old Catholic priest serves God by creating abstract paintings that he sells by the hundreds.
No ordinary preacher, Father Bill, as he’s known throughout Pomona’s fledgling arts district, long ago discarded his clerical collar in favor of a painter’s smock. Only on Sundays does he trade it for vestments to deliver Mass at a local church or one of several detention facilities for young offenders.
All other times Moore is head of the Ministry of the Arts for the West Coast branch of his religious order, the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. His job is to serve God by painting whatever comes to mind.
“That’s Bill’s gift, his talent, and we have to support that,” says Donal McCarthy, who is the order’s West Coast provincial and Moore’s superior. “When you’ve got a creative person, you shouldn’t stifle that creativity.”
Leaders of the order, founded more than 200 years ago in France, know of no other member whose only mission has been to paint.But then Moore, a child of the ’60s who can quote the words of Jim Morrison, Bruce Springsteen and Jesus Christ with equal facility, has been a barrier-breaker since he ignored his provincial’s order his freshman year of college to study either philosophy or theology. He majored in art.
“The next year, a letter came from the provincial saying all the students are now encouraged to major in subjects of their choice. I thought that was very cool,” Moore recalls with a smile as he sits in the lobby of his modest studio sipping coffee. A copy of underground comic-book artist R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis sits on the coffee table, and works by Japanese artist Kazumi Tanaka (a personal favorite) are displayed here and there.
Since early childhood, Moore says, he knew he had the calling - to be a painter. The call to be a priest came later.
“I was doing little abstract paintings when I was a little boy, like around 8, 9 years old,” Moore recalls.
“My grandmother would just think they were the greatest things,” he continues with a laugh. “The rest of the members of my family, they were, ahh, kind of more like art critics.”
Not that the art world has been all that harsh on him. Moore’s works, which are often compared to those of abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, sell for more than $5,000 apiece, and he has been the subject of frequent shows at galleries throughout the Southwest.Any profits he makes from those shows go directly to his order.
“His work, as abstract as it is, has a definite spiritual quality to it,” says Fenton Moore, who is curating a Moore exhibition that opened Dec. 24 at the Galerie Zuger in Santa Fe, N.M. “It could be that it comes more from his heart than what you feel from other abstract artists. Or it could also be because he’s just a very religious person.”
Religion, Pages 29 on 12/31/2009