Ming Fay

Ming Fay (Chinese: 费明杰) is a Shanghai-born and New York City-based sculptor and professor. His work focuses on the concept of the garden as a symbol of utopia and the relationship between man and nature. Drawing upon an extensive knowledge of plants both Eastern and Western, real and mythical, Fay creates his own calligraphic floating forest of reeds, branches and surreal species.

Ming Fay was born in Shanghai in 1943 and raised in Hong Kong. His mother was an artist, and his father worked in the then-burgeoning Hong Kong movie industry as an art director. Both were students of Shanghai-based sculptor Zhang Chongren, who had studied Western sculpture in Europe. Ming came to the United States in 1961 to study at the Columbus College of Art and Design and later at the Kansas City Institute of Art. Subsequently, Fay earned a graduate degree in sculpture at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1975. He currently teaches sculpture at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey.^[1]

Ming Fay has exhibited internationally in numerous solo exhibitions, and his work has frequented important group shows throughout the world. Exhibitions have taken place at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Phillip Morris (New York, NY), the National Academy Museum (New York, NY), Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, Łódź Biennale at The International Artists’ Museum (Łódź, Poland), Butters Gallery (Portland, Oregon), Ramapo Gallery (Ramapo, New Jersey), and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. Fay has also completed numerous public art commissions including a suspended glass and steel sculpture for a residential lobby in Philadelphia, a large scale tree sculpture in Puerto Rico, sculptural benches for New York City's Staten Island Ferry Whitehall Terminal, and glass mosaic murals for the Delancey Street – Essex Street New York City Subway station.^[2] He is also the recipient of the 2007 NYFA fellowship in Sculpture.^[3]

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