Norman Moore

Norman has an MFA from Pratt Institute and a BFA from Columbus College of Arts and Design. He has been a professional artist since 1986 and was a member of the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition in the 1990s. He made a mosaic commission for a NY subway station. Norman learned how to make neon art at Urban Glass in Brooklyn. He relocated to the San Francisco area in 1996 and set up a neon studio in Oakland. In 2004, Norman started teaching neon sculpture with Christian Scheiss at the Crucible in Oakland and continues to do so. He is a member of the Plasma Arts Society, a group of artists dedicated to creating work that uses electric gas discharge plasma as an artistic medium. He has shown his work at the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, Davies Symphony Hall and has a one artist show at SomArts in San Francisco. Norman collaborated with Nancy Mizuno Elliott on a commission to create a permanent light sculpture installation at the Castro Valley Library in 2009. In 2021 I completed a public art project for the City of Alameda in Jean Sweeney Open Space Park called Gateway to California. This project comprises two 16-foot-tall mosaic columns depicting Alameda's relationship to the ocean as an island in the bay making it both a historical gateway for the goldrush and a biological bridge between land and water.
In a new body work, Norman objectifies his experiences with a series of non-representational constructions in stainless steel and hand-made paper. They are like pieces of memory torn from a pool accumulated over years. The metal armature not only provides a skeletal structure for the art but also has fingers reaching out like synapses attempting to connect to other experiences. Where depictive art might be seen as a window into another world, these works are best described as manifestations of emotion. As works on paper, they are meant to defy the traditional rectangular two-dimensional frame.
Each artwork is based on a particular place, work of art, or event that has touched the artist’s life. It creates a terse visual poetry that speaks of love in time and how remembrances surrender to change. It presents experiences in a format unique to the artist, showing an affinity for the medium and process used. The paper forms have a rough, almost primal look when attached to their armature and are sometimes painted to add depth to the shapes.
The approach for this series evolved from Norman’s previous art. Earlier pieces used the idea of making fragments from a fictional place and time. However, this art is intended to provide a glimpse into the artist’s personal experiences.