Miya Ando is a minimalist metalworker; employing steel and pigment to create quiet, meditative environments. Working solely in two-dimensional metal panels, she combines tranquility with strength that results in landscape-like works of art made from traditional metalworking techniques. Living and working in Brooklyn, New York, Miya describes her process and inspiration. Read on…

“I have been creating works on steel canvas for over a decade, utilizing metal finishing techniques to create quiet, abstract, meditative environments. Ultimately, I am interested in the study of subtraction to the point of purity, simplicity and refinement.

“The works are informed by my spiritual, familial and academic experiences along with my continued theoretical and religious pursuits. I am half-Japanese and half-Russian and was raised bilingually and in two distinct cultures; a Buddhist temple in Japan and in mountainous rural Northern California. I was raised amongst sword smiths-turned Buddhist priests, as I am the descendant of Bizen sword maker Ando Yoshiro Masakatsu. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in East Asian Studies, I attended a Masters program at Yale University to pursue my interest in Buddhist Iconography and imagery. My formal academic studies have given me a conceptual foundation for my artworks.

“My reasons for working with steel are multifold: since the first time I started to work with the medium, I felt a deep appreciation for the dynamic properties of the material. It simultaneously conveys strength and permanence and yet in the same instant appears delicate, fragile, luminous, soft, ethereal. I view the steel as a platform and foundation, which supports the aesthetics of the abstract concepts I have been investigating. The medium becomes both a contradiction and juxtaposition for expressing notions of evanescence, including ideas such as the transitory and ephemeral nature of
all things, quietude and the underlying impermanence of everything.” —Miya Ando

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