Gracie Moon, a fifth-year art and music double major at Point Loma Nazarene University, is a sculpture and installation artist and was recently selected as a 2024 Emerging Visual Artist by the NTC Foundation. As part of the foundation’s non profit initiative, which serves to enrich the local community by renovating the Arts District in Liberty Station, Moon receives a studio space and the opportunity to showcase her sculptural and performative work.
From experimenting with fermentation to working with wire, trash and tubes, Moon crafts fragile, yet powerful, visual stories that explore themes of identity. Having grown up in a multicultural home, Gracie said that her upbringing is her greatest inspiration and has allowed her to experiment with different approaches toward her artistic process.
“I like to use objects that feel familiar, but also still kind of foreign, as I explore ways that I feel connected to my heritage,” Moon said.
Moon was originally a biochemistry major, but said taking art classes opened her eyes to a new passion for art.
“As soon as I took a sculpture class, I was introduced to how art can be really raw, weird and vulnerable and explore things that I don’t understand, that make me uncomfortable and how it can be a way of self exploration.”
A guidance in Moon’s artistic journey is Karah Lain, assistant professor of visual art in painting and drawing at PLNU. Lain assisted Moon with transitioning majors and helped to channel her ambition into her art.
“[It] was really fun to watch how she started being more confident, experimenting with different materials and starting to find her voice more and more,” Lain said.
Moon’s vulnerability shows up in her art, reflecting an exploration and understanding of her own identity. According to her website, “Through ephemeral and often fragile sculpture, she [Moon] rides the tension of an in-between space, where her social location as a multiracial Japanese and White American can be held simultaneously. Gracie’s work investigates racial and cultural intersectionality to discuss the complexity of identity.”
“I like to use a lot of materials that are passed down objects or domestic materials, or things that give a sense of nostalgia,” Moon said.
Moon’s artistic passion empowered her to explore more ideas and aesthetic visions in a way that relates to such nostalgia. A particular piece Moon favors was showcased in her senior art show last April in Keller Gallery.
“[There was] this ice piece that I did where I made all of these Japanese foods that I grew up eating,” Moon said. “I encased them in blocks of ice and tied yarn around them and hung them from this laundry hamper that my grandma always used.”
Using such objects from her past helped her piece bleed into a deeper meaning, as the ice began to melt and the food fell from lack of security. “It was kind of a lament of that ‘ticking,’ that time is like the ice [that] melted,” Moon said.
Moon noted how the melting explores “the idea that memories of people don’t last forever.”
“I have been really passionate lately about making serious art in a non-serious way,” Moon said. “I want to make things everyday and just have as much creativity in my life as I can.”
Claire Downey, a PLNU 2024 alumna and one of Moon’s closest friends, said that she appreciates Moon’s art.
“I think a lot of people will find reassurance, familiarity and understanding in her art,” Downey said. “Plus, she’s a young artist and we should always support young creatives who are doing impressive and wonderful things with their talents.”
The Emerging Artist residency allows Moon to host workshops. She held a color theory workshop on Sept. 21, where people ages 12 and older attended and mixed their own nail polish. Moon will host two more workshops later this year.
“I’m really hoping that [the workshop] opens up a space for people to not feel like they have to be an artist,” Moon said. “But that engaging in creativity in a playful and joyful way [lets] people have fun and feel validation in their own creative capacities.”
