Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020.

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020.

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020 (detail).

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020 (detail).

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020 (detail).

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020 (detail).

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020 (detail).

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020 (detail).

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020 (detail).

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020.

Artwork copyright Amy Cheng. Photo courtesy of the artist, by Dale Lang, 2020.

Nature Provides, 2020

Amy Cheng
(American, born 1956)

Location: Western State Hospital, Lakewood

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

The design of artist Amy Cheng’s Nature Provides mural bursts with playful energy. It captures the abundance of nature and its life-enhancing capacities. Its repetitive, circular forms suggest a planetary and cosmic sphere as well as a biological, cellular, and atomic realm. The local art selection committee wanted a mural that would bring brightness and a sense of energy to the building and to its busy staff.

The artwork’s title Nature Provides links to a theme that is also part of the history of Western State Hospital. It originally included an extensive farm that provided work and a purpose for its patients and food for the community. This was an exceptional idea in an era when caring for the mentally ill was mostly restricted to feeding, housing, soothing, and overseeing them. The Patient Services Center where the mural is located descends directly from this tradition by providing the food, medicine, and materials needed to run Western State Hospital.

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Department of Social and Health Services.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Amy Cheng creates colorful, lively, and elegant artworks that are full of pattern and repetition. She notes that "my aesthetic sense is fundamentally Asian rather than Western. Western art, with its roots in Classic Greek and Roman art, comes out of a worldview very different from Asian and Middle Eastern art, which is richly embedded in patterning and ornamentation."

Cheng was born in Taiwan, and she was raised in Brazil (South America), Oklahoma, and Texas. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree (1978) from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Fine Arts degree (1982) from Hunter College in New York City. She is an art professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz. She has created many pubic artworks, including a project at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. She is based in New York City.