Discipline: Visual Art

Wen-Ying Tsai

Discipline: Visual Art
Region: New York, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 1965, 1966
Wen-Ying Tsai (1928–2013) was an American sculptor and artist best known for creating sculptures using electric motors, stainless steel rods, stroboscopic light, and audio feedback control. Wen-Ying Tsai was born in Xiamen, China and emigrated to the United States in 1950, where he attended the University of Michigan, receiving a B.M.E. in 1953. He moved to New York City after graduation and embarked on a successful career as an architectural engineer. While working as an engineer by day, Tsai pursued artistic studies at night. In 1963, Tsai won a John Hay Whitney Fellowship for Painting, after which he decided to leave engineering and devote full-time to the arts. He began to make three-dimensional constructions using optical effects, fluorescent paints, and ultra-violet light. During a fellowship at MacDowell in 1965, Tsai contemplated the sunlight shimmering in the trees and had a sudden insight to use his engineering background to create art work that replicates natural phenomena. Tsai decided that "the shimmering was not enough" and that what was needed was a way that the viewer could interact with the work. It was that inspiration that eventually lead him to the idea to use a stroboscope coupled with a feedback control system.

Studios

Mixter

Wen-Ying Tsai worked in the Mixter studio.

Built in 1927–1930, the Florence Kilpatrick Mixter Studio was funded by its namesake and designed by the architect F. Winsor, Jr., who also designed MacDowell's original Savidge Library in 1925. Mixter Studio, solidly built of yellow and grey-hued granite, once had sweeping views of Pack Monadnock to the east. The lush forest has now grown…

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