As a self-described botanist of sorts, the artist Ming Fay spent his career cultivating his own sort of vegetation—pears, oranges, peaches, and plums; peppers, pea pods, and nuts, each peculiarly whopping in its proportion. Just as all plants reflect the composition of their soil, Fay’s were the product of his taking root in New York. Born in 1943 to artists in Shanghai and educated in Hong Kong, he went on to study art in the Midwest and California, sculpting burly structures from steel. The chastened circumstances he encountered in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where he relocated in 1973, forced him to seek out cheaper media, such as the discarded newspapers he layered over wire armatures. (The method was the same he used to craft kites and lanterns in his childhood.) Eventually, Fay befriended other immigrants and artists, finding inspiration, too, in the crates of produce lining Canal. The profusion of brick and concrete moved him to the realization that he was living “out of nature”—and that he could reimmerse himself through art.
Fay, who died in March, had a keen se…
