Nancy Toomey Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Miya Ando titled Waiting for the Moon, traveling to the gallery from Bolinas Museum, on view from May 17 to July 1, 2023. The gallery is located inside San Francisco’s Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota Street. Gallery hours are Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 12pm to 4pm, and by appointment–please contact nancy@nancytoomeyfineart.com or 415-307-9038.

Miya Ando’s artworks are a visual meditation on the cycles of nature and the passage of time; concept, image, and material are inextricably linked. The layered, refractive surfaces of Ando’s sculptures and paintings on metal or wood are a physical articulation of contemplation of the impermanent, temporal nature of their subjects, including seasons, tides, skyscapes, and elements rendered in ink, pigment, micronized silver, gold, mica, or resin. Her frequent choice of multilingual titles for her artworks—a Japanese word and its approximate English translation—reveals the variations in thought and perception between the two cultures that inform her identity and experience; the Japanese literary words naming and describing the varied qualities of the natural world express a philosophy of existence not often present in Western cultures.

The title of this exhibition is inspired by a series of 1,347 daily drawings created during the Covid lockdowns and in the intervening time. These drawings were made with natural indigo dye and micronized pure silver on Washi and Hahnemühle paper and recorded the night sky between March 17, 2020, and September 7, 2022. The project, named Nanayo, was inspired by an esoteric Japanese Buddhist ritual called “Nanayomachi” or “Shichiyamachi,” which translates to “waiting for seven nights,” wherein the faithful await moonrise and offer prayers during the 17th through the 23rd lunar evenings of each month. The moon drawings are presented in ancient Japan and China’s 72 and 24 seasons calendars. Many pieces in this exhibition, including 30 selected moon drawings and across mediums, link directly to Ando’s deep relationship with Bolinas and coastal Northern California environments.

Miya Ando’s work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at The Asia Society Museum, Houston; The Noguchi Museum, New York; Savannah College Of Art and Design Museum, Savannah; The Nassau County Museum, Roslyn Harbor; and The American University Museum, Washington DC. Her work has also been included in recent group exhibitions at The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Haus Der Kunst, Munich; The Bronx Museum; and The Queens Museum of Art, NY. Ando’s work is included in the public collections of LACMA; The Nassau County Museum; The Corning Museum of Glass; The Detroit Institute of Arts; The Luft Museum; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art; The Museum of Art and History; among other public institutions as well as in numerous private collections. Ando has been the recipient of several grants and awards, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant Award, and has produced numerous public commissions, most notably a thirty-foot-tall sculpture built from World Trade Center steel installed in Olympic Park in London to mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11, for which she was nominated for a DARC Award in Best Light Art Installation. Ando was commissioned to create artwork for the historic Philip Johnson Glass House, New Canaan, CT. The artist holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, studied East Asian Studies at Yale University and Stanford University, and apprenticed with a Master metalsmith in Japan.

Nancy Toomey Fine Art