Julie Moon is a Toronto-based ceramic artist. Her practice is deeply connected to the intuitive process of making, allowing subconscious thoughts and geometries to manifest. Ceramics, with its unique ability to capture intricate details and textures, gives voice to her interests in merging elements of shape and surface. Julie thinks of the forms she builds as canvases for surface design, where she explore decorative arts, the language of pattern, and the tension between the organic and architectural, creating works that hover between metaphysical realms and our corporeal world.
My combination of form and surface are in dialogue with notions of beauty and strength: botanical, organic imagery, often thought of as fleeting and fragile, I represent as sturdy, enduring, and larger-than-life. Similarly, I draw from patterns and motifs that throughout history have been minimized as “ornamental” or “cosmetic,” instead making those elements my focus. In doing so, I not only challenge ideas of the feminine and of beauty, but also reframe the unnoticed, the vernacular, and the non-Western criterion. I wish to engage with my audience by inviting them to reconsider and celebrate unexpected expressions of being.
Prior to ceramics, I spent over a decade in the garment industry where access to an ever-expanding lexicon of pattern made a deep impression on me. During my BFA at OCAD University, I studied Fibre Arts. This combination of experiences allowed me to explore a vast array of textiles, where patterns have existed for thousands of years, well before the industrial age mechanized the creation process. I found that these patterns have the ability to transform an environment, communicate a personality, express a mood, or symbolize a tradition. Today, I continue to be inspired by the language of ornament, tactile media, and their interplay with the human figure.
As a racialized artist, I inherently inhabit multiple worlds. I am fascinated by the ability of craft traditions to cross cultural and geographic lines, and I routinely draw from a collective and intergenerational past, offering reinterpretations through my personal language of ceramics.
I have previously studied (graduate school) and have made work (residencies) internationally. Having the opportunity to create in different environments has informed various methodologies in my practice, which, in addition to producing sculptural work, includes teaching and collaborating with designers.