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Born in 1943 in Shanghai, China, Ming Fay moved to Hong Kong in 1952. In 1961, he went to the United States to study at the Columbus College of Art and Design, Ohio, and later at the Kansas Institute of Art in Missouri. In 1968, he pursued graduate studies in sculpture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since obtaining his MFA degree, he has taught at the Columbus College of Art and Design, University of Pittsburgh, Hong Kong polytechnic, and Pratt Institute. He is currently teaching at the Willian Paterson College in Wayne, New Jersey.
Making New York his base, Mr. Fay has been very active in the avant-garde art scene. With several other Chinese-American artists he founded the Epoxy Group. Additionally, he has served as board member or adviser to several nonprofit art organizations in New York, panelist of the National Endowment for the Arts, and international juror for the Hong Kong Biennial. He has been awarded public art commissions and has held numerous solo exhibitions and participated in group shows in New York and other American cities, as well as Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Mr. Fay's work encompasses a very wide range of media, from drawing, painting, and sculpture to environmental installations, and utilizes such materials as papet ink, acrylic paint, metal, glass, clay, and porcelain. His favorite material, however has been paper. He uses a malleable paper pulp mixture on a metal framework to build three-dimensional shapes to which he may apply paint, and he also makes shaped textural planes with sheet paper and other materials.
His subject matter includes fruit, plants, sea shells, bones, and fantasized objects. Often many times larger than life size, they tend to impose a haunting presence on viewers. Mr. Fay explores themes of growth and decay, life and death through these symbols (his paper reliefs, for instance, suggest animal or human skins from a religious sacrifice). His blend of Oriental symbolism and primitive mysticism sometimes disguises a deep concern for the human destiny in casual playfulness.