Meet Kat & Mike Moore | Artists & Entrepreneurs

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kat & Mike Moore and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kat & Mike, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Our business, Beacons Mandala, is on a mission to spread positivity and healing through art. We create sand art installations on local beaches that offer hope and intention to people who may need a kind message on a hard day. We believe that harnessing creativity can be a healing outlet, especially when it involves connecting with the earth as a co-creator. Our mandala workshops are designed to help individuals connect to their own creativity. By inspiring even one person to find an outlet to channel their creativity, we believe this can have a ripple effect and contribute to a more positive and connected world.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
We are self-taught artists that stumbled onto our own creativity later in life. I think one thing that has really helped is focusing on the meditative and spiritual component to art. We don’t begin our installations with a plan rather we spend time meditating and understanding what intention we want to infuse into our art. Its more about the feeling that informs the shapes, size and detail of the installation. We are proud of the journey we’ve been on and how we stuck with this over the past few years despite knowing nothing about sand art in the beginning. But we showed up every day and even if the designs didn’t come out how we may have envisioned, we kept practicing. We eventually evolved our tools and our practice and we’ve grown a lot as artists and individuals in the process.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
A week visit to North County would definitely include lots of time at the beach for early morning walks, surf, meditations and sunsets. We love Beacons Beach & Grandview in Leucadia, Swamis in Encinitas and Tide Beach in Solana beach which offer more secluded spots with gorgeous backdrops. A trip to the Leucadia farmers market on Sunday for sure! We are huge coffee lovers, our favorite spots are Lofty and Bump. We love the food scene and would definitely recommend Goodonya and Nectarine Grove for breakfast/ lunch and Choice Juicery for a Magic Milk. For dinner, we would do Birdseye Kitchen for delicious Thai food and Buona Forchetta for a family-style italian experience. We love a good cocktail at Herb & Sea by the bar or Campfire in Carlsbad. The Meditation Gardens in Encinitas are a great spot to meditate, journal and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
We want to thank our local community of Leucadia and the multiple artists that have inspired us along the way. Kirk Van (Kirkos) in particular who is a local artist and has been doing sand art for decades. His beautiful labyrinths have been a staple on our beaches. He is who initially inspired us to pick up our first bamboo stick and co-create with the sand. From there, our community has been so supportive of the journey. In a lot of other places people may question a couple walking down with a squeegee and rakes to draw in the sand and eventually gets washed away but in north county SD, we’ve met so many amazing people who have approached us and shared their stories. A few even have picked up rakes themselves! We also want to thank Paul Heussenstamm. We took his mandala teacher training a few years back and it was a huge inspiration for us as artists. He is incredible artist and a wonderful human being. Definitely recommend his workshops to anyone looking to deepen their creativity.

Website: https://beaconsmandala.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beaconsmandala/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTFpiG3C4QsBx2_CMTdLK5A

Image Credits
Studio Luniste