Miya Ando

Miya Ando is an American artist whose metal canvases and sculpture articulate themes of perception and ones relationship to time. The foundation of her practice is the transformation of surfaces. Half Japanese & half Russian-American, Ando is a descendant of Bizen sword makers and was raised in a Buddhist temple in Japan and in coastal Northern California. She has continued her 16th generation Japanese sword smithing and Buddhist lineage by combining metals, reflectivity and light in her transcendent paintings and sculpture. In 2011 she completed two memorial sculptures for 9/11 in which she utilized 30 foot tall pieces of steel which had fallen from the World Trade Center Buildings. Ando’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world, including a recent show curated by Guggenheim curator Nat Trotman, the Queens Museum, the De Saisset Museum and the Worcester Museum. Miya’s public commissions include projects in South Korea, Berlin, London, Puerto Rico, New York and California. Her work appears in many important public and private collections and she is the recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant in 2012, the Thanatopolis Special Artist Award and Public Outdoor Commission Winner and Puffin Foundation Grant winner. A recent critics' picks of ARTFORUM, Ando received her Bachelor of Science Magna Cum Laude in East Asian Studies at UC Berkeley and continued her studies at Yale University, in addition to serving as an apprentice to a master metal smith in Japan. Miya’s large scale artwork “Emptiness The Sky” (Shou Sugi Ban) is featured in “Frontiers Reimagined” exhibition in the 56th Venice Biennale.

July, 2016

Sources:

http://www.miyaando.com/bio/