The moon. So distant. Still made up of myths and metaphors that are arguably more compelling than actual NASA imagery. Even Google's lunar map blackens the "objective" eye of science and settles the debate regarding the moon's composition. Zoom all the way in, it ain't mochi. But no worry, look up and the rabbit is still there; your obaachan is smarter than Google and NASA anyway.

The accumulated fables of every human culture and the wisdom of emergency rooms will always swat any attempts to grasp the moon in 100 percent rational terms. So naturally the unprecedented technical, military, scientific and logistical effort to put a man on the moon invoked the Greek god of rationality himself.

For many of the Apollo astronauts, those exemplars of Western warrior heroism, the cosmic view of the Earth during the return trip was a permanently life-altering vision. Just for having survived and accomplished the mission they bolstered national pride, but unfortunately our culture had no room for concrete mystics, for people who literally saw the world differently. As a result, many astronauts shared the fate of innumerable combat veterans: struggles with alcoholism, depression and divorce. Perhaps, as Jodi Foster's sky-scanning character in the movie "Contact" said when finally confronted with the Absolutely Cosmic: "They should have sent a poet," which is to say an artist.

The Academy Art Center at Linekona's exhibition "Illuminate!" operates at this fundamental level where science and art swirl and wrestle. Curator Carol Khewhok has brought together 11 seasoned artists who take us into orbit around a broad, accessible theme: the moon. This chaotic insurgency reclaims some of the lunar imaginary that has to date been occupied by science fiction and the inertia of Western history itself.

Liz Train's hung textiles of applique and paint are the waving standards for this effort. Among them, Train's elegant "Jellyfish and Full Moon" reminds us that creatures without eyes or skeletons are tied to our nearest neighbor by invisible threads. Lori Uyehara's works, from the wooden totems of "Resting Heavy" to the enigmatic assemblage of "Eternity, Moonlight, and the Measure of Time," present elaborate narratives that are well-suited to evoking the mysteries of human-moon relations.

Many artists in the show appropriate and divert the strictly rational course of scientific knowledge. Daven Hee's moon buggies are equally technical but dense opposites of the fragile hotrods that traversed the lunar surface.

Shigeru Miyamoto's "Moon Walker," a three-legged modular alien — or advanced spacesuit for humans — seems designed for fluid motion in low-gravity and safety in environmental extremes. Donna Shimazu's "Orbital Decay" is a pair of earrings featuring satellites (perfect spheres of lava) whose trajectories are wrought in gold. Her work, and that of fellow jeweler Gordon Uyehara, could be part of fashion lines from the future or gifts from Chang-O: the subject of Uyehara's exquisite hybrid of personal ornamentation and narrative representation.

The sheer number of works presented brings an air of the art bazaar to the show. Artist statements mounted near each piece supplement evocative titles and invite an individual encounter and create a back-and-forth between shopping and meditation. The work of artists with multiple pieces in the show is dispersed throughout the gallery to form little districts where dozens of local dialogues emerge — dialogues that are mostly carried out by animals.

Whether working in ceramic or fabric, May Izumi creates detailed animal figures that have been shattered then stitched back together. Her work echoes the section of forested asteroid belt created by Cade Roster in "Rite of the Great Glow." With an attention to detail typically reserved for special-effects artists and tabletop war game buffs, Roster renders each aspect of these pagan bears' ceremonial paraphernalia to the point where their social hierarchy becomes legible. In fact Miyamoto's ceramic "Moon Man" and Gordon Uyehara's silver "Ceremonial Illumination Vessel" could easily be artifacts from their culture.

Dedication to craft is echoed in Izumi's "Sleep Tight, Don't Dream," where the twisted human limbs and faces emerging from or grafted onto stuffed rabbit toys are painstakingly detailed. Striking the chord of emergence, "Moon Hatchlings," Rochelle Lum's anime-cute microinstallation of just-born honu enjoys Train's "Moonrise" hanging above its pedestal. Emergent multiplicity is also invoked in the compound gaze of Aelda Lei Buss' powerful "Spiritual Vision." Dozens of eyes look up from a candy box, and they are eventually mirrored in "Piko," Lynn Weiler Liverton's intimate grid of plaster cast navels. The works of Buss and Liverton weave brilliant cometary trajectories through the show.

It is impossible to reduce "Illuminate!" to a single sentiment or general judgment. The experience is more about witnessing a planetary alignment of artistic visions than about setting up a permanent base to guard one's specific ideas of the moon — or art. In the end this rare conjunction had me wondering: What if all of the artists had collaborated on a single installation and each artist's strengths were deliberately applied to amplify those of another? It would be like seeing a single world from a different perspective, just like an astronaut. Imagining the hypothetical results was like receiving a gift. Mine is perhaps exactly the kind of open (looney ... lunar ... ) thinking that the curator sought to spark all along.

David A.M. Goldberg is a cultural critic and writer. He is a lecturer in art, art history and American studies at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.