Venture into Wondrous ‘Garden’ of Ming Fay

Chinese American artist Ming Fay died earlier this year, but his works will continue to plant the seeds of imagination and inspiration in Boston and beyond with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s show “Edge of the Garden.”

The installation celebrates the life and five-decade career of Fay, who was born in 1943 in Shanghai and became known for transforming his fantastical gardens, filled with giant fruits, seeds, medicinal roots, and imagined hybrid plants. His works are said to explore themes of memory, identity, and imagination. Drawing from both Chinese and American cultural traditions, Fay created immersive environments that blur the boundaries between nature and art, reality and fantasy.

His show at the Gardner will run until Sept. 21 in the Hostetter Gallery. It will mark the first major showing of Fay’s work in Boston and New England — and the most comprehensive to date.

The exhibition begins with a selection of Fay’s sketchbooks, zines, preparatory drawings, and collected natural materials that inspired his work. A video interview with his son, Parker Fay, filmed in the artist’s New York City studio, offers a personal glimpse into his creative world. Two newly restored Ming dynasty bird-and-flower paintings from the Museum’s collection — Pheasants (mid-1400s) and Hibiscus and Ducks (c. 1500) — provide historical context and echo the exhibition’s themes of symbolism, beauty, and the natural world.

Sampan had the chance to speak with Parker Fay, and Gabrielle Niu, curator of “Edge of the Garden.” Parker shared a childhood memory of watching “helicopter seeds” — the winged samaras from maple trees, spin through the air with his father, a small moment that later inspired one of the sculptures in the exhibition.

“It’s the little things that stay with you,” Parker said. Both he and Niu emphasized that the exhibition is for everyone.

“You don’t need to know art to enjoy it,” Gabrielle noted. “The subjects, fruits, seeds, plants, are all around us. It’s about reconnecting with wonder, memory, and everyday beauty.”

In addition to the show at the Gardner, a companion exhibition is being held in Chinatown, “Where We Meet,” which runs to Oct. 10, at the Pao Arts Center.

Presented alongside artists Mel Taing and Yu-Wen Wu, the show reimagines gardens as vital spaces of care, healing, memory, and community, especially within urban settings. Admission is free, and the program includes collaborative events as well as a shared zine that connects the Fenway and Chinatown neighborhoods.

The ‘Inside the Garden: A Three-Part Journey’ unfolds across three thematic chapters, each illuminating a unique facet of Fay’s work: connection, memory, and creativity.

While living in New York from the 1970s through the 2010s, Fay sought ways to reconnect with nature in the heart of the city. He foraged inspiration from street corners and Chinatown markets, gathering sweetgum spheres, maple seeds, and twisted locust pods, later magnifying them into monumental sculptures. Playful, poetic works like “Long Stem Cherry” (1990s), “Cayenne Pepper” (1990s), and “Bartlett Pear” (1985) burst with character, bridging the organic with the urban. Often made from papier-mâché, bronze, or ceramic, these works turn the mundane into marvels. Money Tree, a hanging installation of paper leaves and real seeds, symbolizes growth, abundance, and future potential.

Fay’s “A Garden is Memory” gardens are autobiographical, rich in cultural symbolism and personal storytelling. His “Wishbones” (1980s) recall the joyful superstition of breaking a chicken bone to make a wish. The series began when Fay wished for a child, and soon after, his son Parker was born.

“A Garden is Creativity” explores for Fay, how gardens were spaces not only of order, but of wild, unbridled creativity. His mixed-media sculptures, made with sprayed polyurethane foam, venture “beyond the garden into The Jungle,” as the artist described.

More info at gardnermuseum.org.