Heidy Sumei Chuang is a Taiwanese American Artist who works with floral design and painted media. In her works, Chuang links identity and place and merges them using calligraphic lines of Asian paintings interfaced with the Western landscape. She believes that where one comes from and where one lives shapes the person’s identity. Her paintings are memories of places, rather than representations of actual places. As such, these places are imaginary, existing in the space between reality and desire. Perceptible patterns and recognizable objects overlay less perceptible ones so that in many of these works, the figurative and abstract converge.
Heidy Sumei Chuang’s solo exhibitions include Open to Wonder at L'Abri Fellowship, Southborough, MA; La Porte des Merveilles, ARocha France; There is a River, Ditra, NYC; Passage through Dust and Stone, Hephzibah, NYC; Watercolors from the Middle East, Chalet Melez, Switzerland. Chuang was nominated as a lead floral designer at Petali Flowers and Mimosa Flowers. Her florals were featured at Harvard University Faculty Club, Hotel W, Omni Parker House, Hotel W, Fairmont Copley Hotel, Boston Harbor Hotel, Langham Hotel, Liberty Hotel, Old State House, Boston Public Library, and Fogg Art Museum, in Boston MA. Chuang’s work has been featured in publications, one of which is, Designer's Favorite Florist, Architectural Digest. Chuang is a recipient of awards including A Rocha France Artist Residency, Les Courmettes France; Artist Residency representative with A Rocha International, Monaco; Full Fellow Artist Residency, Vermont Studio, Johnson VT; Constantin Alajalov Painting Award, Boston, MA; Yi Huang Chang Grant in Paris, France.
She holds a BFA in painting from Washington University and an MFA from Boston University. Most recently she studied Art and Theology at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland. The artist currently works in collaboration with A Rocha USA, a biodiversity conservation organization, to highlight our planet’s wondrous yet vulnerable habitats and species.
ARTIST STATEMENT for Garden Series
The work of Heidy Sumei Chuang invites the viewer into a healing space of wonder. Her vision begins in a garden, where flowers reveal the story of the earth’s awakening. The spaces in between the leaves, petals, and branches reveal the poetry that captures her imagination. Focusing on edges, forms and lines as it translates to the textures of the paper, fibers of her brush and the fluidity of water, she unveils the essence of her subject. These paintings express the fragility of something elemental to the human heart: a yearning for the ineffable.
