Through November 20, 2004
I cast myself as a Field Scientist/Artist who discovers magical plants: [I specialize] in the collection of plant specimens that are endowed by humans with auspicious meaning.
-- Ming Fay
New York based Chinese artist Ming Fay creates fantastic gardens with gargantuan vegetation. Fay embeds his inventive plant forms with metaphoric meaning that draws upon both Eastern and Western philosophies to pose questions about our complex and often ambiguous relationship with nature. Fay notes that his work evolves around a surrealistic fantasy of real and imagined objects from nature, and displays the Asian belief in magic as well as a sense of humor.
Over the last three decades, Fay has focused on the botanical world as a metaphor for human desire. His magical gardens are rich with meaning, infused, in part, by Chinese symbolism. Fay responded to Montalvo's history as an arboretum in creating his rare indigo Monkey Pots that will be suspended from trees on the grounds. The name of the monkey pot, a fruit originally from the Amazon but transplanted to the tropical and subtropical regions of the world, refers to its pot-like shape that holds seeds so enticing to monkeys that their heads often become stuck in the fruit as they try to obtain it. The monkey pots and their seeds become, as Fay explains, "a loaded metaphor for getting caught up in our desires."
Born in Shanghai in 1943, Ming Fay lives in New York and teaches at William Paterson College (New Jersey). Fay received his BFA from the Kansas City of Art Institute (1967) and his MFA from the University of California in Santa Barbara (1970). He has been awarded numerous public art commissions, and has exhibited nationally in major museums and galleries as well as in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
