Lynn Nguyen
Lynn Nguyen did not grow up in a household that viewed art or writing as a viable career path. Her family emphasized discipline, practicality, and survival. At the same time, she was surrounded by cultural rituals, craftsmanship, and visual memory, elements that later informed how she understands material and process in her work.
Art became a private space for Nguyen to think and process without needing external approval. Verbal expression often felt limited, but making allowed her to work quietly through emotion and thought. Around 2019, she made a conscious decision to pursue art seriously, recognizing it not only as a skill but as a central part of how she wanted to live.
Nguyen earned a BFA, followed by formal training in woodworking, sculpture, and interdisciplinary practice, and she is currently completing her MFA. Her education strengthened her critical thinking and helped her articulate the role of craft, labor, and material intelligence within contemporary art contexts. It also challenged her to situate her work intellectually while remaining grounded in hands-on making. Her practice moves across woodworking, mixed media sculpture, kinetic elements, and digital technologies such as sensors and motors. She is interested in hybridity, particularly in how traditional craft practices can coexist with technological systems. Working across mediums allows her to translate craft-based methods into contemporary forms without abandoning material rigor.
Rather than focusing on a single fixed theme, Nguyen’s work consistently engages silence, labor, balance, memory, and resilience. These ideas emerge through form and process rather than direct narrative. Artists including Binh Pho, Tara Donovan, and David C. Roy have influenced her approach, particularly in their attention to material intelligence, cultural memory, and disciplined craftsmanship.
Her studio process is slow and deliberate. Preparation is treated as an essential part of making, and attention to material guides decision-making throughout the day. She draws inspiration from natural rhythms, water, repetition, and organic structures, which often translate into patterned systems within her sculptural work.
When she encounters periods of low momentum, Nguyen returns to making itself. Repetition and sustained labor function as ways to reestablish focus. Her thesis work required her to trust silence as a valid artistic position while also learning how to articulate that stance within an academic setting.
Nguyen describes her work as offering conditions rather than messages. She hopes viewers encounter slowness, attentiveness, and care, without the need for explanation. She measures success by integrity, defining it through honesty to process and materials and the ability of the work to hold meaning over time. She plans to continue developing a practice centered on craftsmanship while participating in broader contemporary conversations through exhibitions, teaching, and collaboration. Her current projects include her MFA thesis exhibition and a series of kinetic sculptures exploring balance, repetition, and material memory.
