We are proud to announce the representation of
Jan Hoy
Washington State based artist Jan Hoy engages in an inquiry into space, structure, and clarity using elegant forms created by steel and clay. Her work is conceptually driven by formal questions, each sculpture, as she describes is “a three-dimensional answer to a question” arrived at through prolonged contemplation and refinement. The results are abstract forms of striking simplicity, of single, unadorned shapes distilled into an essential geometry with nothing extraneous. This minimalist purity is not an absence, but a presence, an austere elegance born of Hoy’s conviction that the subtlest curve or void speaks volumes, they are perfectly resolved.
Link to Jan’s page at the Paul Kyle Gallery website.
Materiality is central to Hoy’s exploration. She consistently sculpts her smaller works in water-based clay, as these ambitious shapes — when translated into large-scale — require rigorous design. Many of Hoy’s smaller works “almost beg to be scaled up”, she patiently creates, tests, and adjusts, until the structure and balance are achieved, often resulting in an engineering marvel. Her inquiries demand not only aesthetic vision but also technical mastery and innovation. She translates her most resolved forms into cast bronze or Corten steel, metals that impart strength and durability to the work without sacrificing its clarity of line. In these final incarnations, the sculptures carry a profound sense of presence, at once hefty and graceful, grounded by industrial material yet true to the poetic simplicity of their origins.
Jan Hoy has been featured in prominent museum exhibition of Pacific Northwest abstraction. Her sculptures are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner and the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Hoy has brought her vision into public spaces through ambition commissions, notable among these is Continuity, created for the Veteran Home in Walla Walla, Washington, along with other works sited in Seattle, Olympia, and San Francisco. She received her degree from the University of Washington, and lives and works in the town of Coupeville on Whidbey Island, Washington, where “the misty weather, silver skies, and the abundance of healthy greens and browns” created lifelong impact on her aesthetic sensibility.
– Jan Hoy, Unlock, Bronze, 14 in. h. x 18 in. w. x 8 in. d.
– Jan Hoy sculpting with clay in her studio
– Jan Hoy, Interlock, Stainless steel, industrial paint, 48 in. h. x 48 in. w. x 30 in. d.
– Jan Hoy, Stride, Corten steel, stainless steel, 48 in. h. x 30 in. w. x 38 in. d.