Joyce Lin

Artist and sculptural furniture designer, Joyce Lin embraces material experimentation as a core element to art making. She creates work that explores the connections between outer surfaces and the interior, considering the impact of human intervention onto our physical surroundings. Lin’s conceptually and aesthetically intricate works bridge the realm of functional design and fine art sculpture.

Lin aims to capture the humor and anxiety related to the ongoing erosion of boundaries between our natural and artificial worlds through sculptural furniture pieces. Her unexpected and singular approach is best understood through the 1-800-Get Pink chair (2020). This piece exposes the chair’s foam layers through organically shaped cutouts that suggest the chair is shedding its outer skin. The work embodies Lin’s interest in examining how things are made, where they come from, and how separate parts interact to make a functional whole.

“My objects often exist in this ‘limbo,’ or state of transition, as so does my own commitment to dissecting my materials to understand them, change them, and see them anew,” says Lin. “I often use organic materials like wood but then find myself manipulating and injecting them with resins to keep them looking a certain way in perpetuity. Sometimes, I encase them in plexiglass to achieve the feel of a taxidermized specimen or artifact, neither dead nor alive.”

Joyce Lin grew up in Birmingham, Alabama where she attended the Alabama School of Fine Arts. Her cross-disciplinary interests led her to enroll in the Brown/RISD Dual Degree Program, where she earned degrees in Furniture Design at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and Geology-Biology at Brown University and received honors such as the Samuel Gragg Award for Innovation and the Excellence in Craft Award.

Lin has since exhibited in notable galleries and institutions such as the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Her pieces are held in numerous private and public collections including the RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Munson Museum of Art, Utica, New York; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California.  Her practice has been featured in publications such as The New York Times, The Architect’s Newspaper, Dwell, and Paper City Magazine.

Lin currently teaches woodworking and design at Houston’s TXRX Labs makerspace, as well as the Rhode Island School of Design. She is based in Houston, where she produces new work at the East End Maker Hub.