January 12, 2021 Matsu Pine Shou Sugi Ban Silver, by Miya Ando, is made from a single piece of cut wood. The Matsu tree is a type of pine native to Japan. This cut pine block has been burned and then partially coated with silver nitrate. It is exhibited with the charred part of the wood facing up, a choice that affects the potential meaning conveyed by the work.

The title references the Japanese shou sugi ban method of charring wood in order to make it weatherproof and pest resistant. By coating the charred wood in silver nitrate, Ando transforms its visual presence and also embeds it with metaphorical content. In addition to giving the wood a reflective quality, liquid silver nitrate can also be used as a healing agent. It is also used in photography to burn an image onto a paper surface. With the silver nitrate on the bottom of this piece, a suggestion could be made that rather than the silver nitrate healing the burnt wood, the fire is purifying the artificial, chemical coated wood, returning it to its natural state.

Ando’s work is abstract, although it references a broad range of ideas that are of interest to her as a practicing Buddhist, such as the ephemeral and transitory character of nature, and the essential qualities that can be conveyed by certain materials, such as metal, glass, and wood.

Ando presents the titles of her works in Japanese and English. During her time living in Japan, she researched literary and historical texts, compiling poetic Japanese descriptions of natural phenomena. Present in the Japanese descriptions are nuanced layers of thought often lacking in the English translation. These bi-lingual titles convey the sense of duality Ando experiences living between two cultures.

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; and 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. 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 ten-year anniversary of 9/11, for which she was nominated for a DARC Award in Best Light Art Installation. She 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.