Anthony Heinz May
Portland, OR
Sculpture/Installation
Anthony Heinz May is an Oregonian who has spent the majority of his life in the Pacific NW. He obtained a BFA in Painting/Drawing from OSU, with minors in Biology and Chemistry, before traveling abroad to receive a Post-graduate Degree in Art at Cyprus College of Art. After graduating with honors from the MFA Sculpture/New Forms program at Pratt Institute, May continued to live in Brooklyn as an emerging NYC artist for over a decade. His creations are found in various natural, rural and urban settings as site-specific public installations of sculpture exploring relationships between nature, humans and technology.
May seeks various forms of nature (such as dead/dying trees) in development of artwork where natural material is rearranged and reattached together as if a puzzle. Using the grid as a form of human enterprise, Anthony creates art that portrays nature compromised by human-constructed environments. May's art facilitates greater awareness for importance of nature and natural systems in times of sociocultural shift toward deep technological artificiality. He views his art as a form of eco-aestheticism while promoting the belief that the origins of dehumanization began from relations humans developed with Earth and the natural world, as existing solely for human exhaustion. May explains part of his beliefs saying, "Nature only happens once. All human facsimile or copy thereof oppresses terribly, dismissing Earth as if a toy, game or even pet for human compartmentalization, while killing it through a narrowing aperture of scope. Until humans recognize and rationalize their collective (one) identity as with nature instead of opposed to it, will humans possibly overcome inequality, to begin a process of healing one another through shared mending of the Earth."