Anna Sew Hoy
Los Angeles, CA
Anna Sew Hoy lives and works in Los Angeles. Through experimentation in the studio, she invents eccentric processes for working clay, metal and items from the everything-drawer. In her sculptures, the slowness of the handmade collides with symbols of speedy communication and global junk to create totemic forms. Daily acts lead to inspiration, where a breakthrough may occur when pulling a tissue to blow one’s nose. Solo presentations of Sew Hoy’s work have been exhibited at the Aspen Art Museum; the Hammer Museum; Koenig & Clinton, New York; LAXART; and Various Small Fires, LA; among others. Her work is in the collections of the Hammer Museum, SFMOMA, LACMA, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. She was awarded the California Community Foundation Grant for Emerging Artists in 2013, and the United States Artists Broad Fellowship in 2006. Sew Hoy received her MFA from Bard College in 2008.
From the Journal
Psychic Body Grotto
Anna Sew Hoy invents eccentric processes for working clay, metal, and items from the everything-drawer.
Artist BioIn Psychic Body Grotto, spontaneous gesture becomes architecture. This is a figurative gazebo—cast in bronze and sited outdoors—that provides relief from everyday Cartesian structures. Psychic Body Grotto is unpredictable and organic, created with rough gestures in clay. The clay maquette is brought to life-size in bronze so that viewers can walk in and become enclosed. In the Grotto, possibilities exist for invented ritual and spontaneous gathering.
From the Journal
We spoke to Anna Sew Hoy just before she premiered her Creative Capital project, Psychic Body Grotto, as a public sculpture at Los Angeles’s newest green space, the LA State Historic Park.