Alumna's Pigs Fly Off Shelves

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering alumna Brigitte Le (B.S. '84) was the recently the subject of a Washington Post story about her contemporary Vietnamese art gallery, Galerie Brigitte, and the flying pig statues she has created to celebrate the inauguration of President Barak Obama.

Le, who minored in art while at the University of Maryland, opened her gallery in 2002 after working 13 years as a systems engineer for IBM. She originally produced flying pig statues in 2007, partly in honor of the Year of the Pig and partly as a symbol of achieving anything presumed to be impossible.

Le has since been customizing the statues to suit a variety of tastes and accomplishments, and most recently decided to produce pigs with a "Yes We Can!" theme to commemorate the election of the nation's first African-American president.

Learn More:

Read the Washington Post story, "Making It: Now that Obama has triumphed, entrepreneur hopes pigs will fly for her, too," by Elizabeth Chang »

Order a "Yes We Can!" flying pig statue at when-pigsfly.com »

Published February 4, 2009