Maya Lin is a Chinese-born American architect, artist, designer and sculptor, who represents Post-Minimalism and Environmental Art movements. Most of her artworks, ranging from small sculptures to magnificent large environmental installations, seem to take inspiration from the natural features and landscape.
Background
Maya Lin was born on October 5, 1959 in Athens, Ohio, United States. She is a daughter of Henry Huan Lin, a ceramist and former dean of the Ohio University College of Fine Arts, and Julia Chang Lin, a poet and teacher. Lin has also an older brother, Tan Lin, a poet.
Maya's parents migrated to the United States from China in the late 1940s.
Education
From an early age, Maya excelled in Mathematics, which led her toward a career in Architecture. In 1981, she graduated from Yale University in New Haven with Bachelor of Arts degree. Lin continued her studies and obtained Master of Architecture degree in 1986 and Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1987.
Lin was also awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Harvard University, Williams College and Smith College.
In 1981, Lin won a public design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, beating 1,421 other competition submissions. The black cut-stone masonry wall, with the names of 57,661 fallen soldiers, carved into its face, was completed in late October 1982. In 1988, she went on to design a monument for the civil rights movement on behalf of the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Civil Rights Memorial was built in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1989.
Some time later, in 1993, Maya created her work "The Women’s Table", which commemorated the coeducation of women at Yale, and she also designed "Groundswell", an installation of 43 tons of glass pebbles at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. In 1995, she designed the "Wave Field" at the University of Michigan, in which she reshaped grass-covered terrain to resemble undulating ocean waves.
In 2000, Lin was appointed an artist and architect for the Confluence Project, in which she was commissioned to create a series of seven art installations along the Columbia River and Snake River. In 2005, she designed the new plaza, that anchors the Claire Trevor School of the Arts at the University of California, Irvine. Two years later, Maya installed "Above and Below", an outdoor sculpture at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indiana. The following year, she completed "2 x 4 Landscape", a 30-ton sculpture, which is made of many pieces of wood.
In 2009, Lin finished her first work of art in Las Vegas, named "Silver River". In 2013, she completed "A Fold in the Field", her largest work to date, which she created, using 105,000 cubic metres of earth and it covered three hectares.
Currently, Maya Lin works in her "Maya Lin Studio" in New York. She continues to create important installations, using elements of the natural world, always focusing on landscape.
Lin believes, that art should be an act of every individual, that is willing to say something, that is new and not quite familiar.
Quotations:
"I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me."
"To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want to do is incredible freedom."
"I had very few friends. We always ate dinner with our parents. We didn't want to go out. American adolescence was a lot wilder than I would have felt comfortable with."
"Art is very tricky because it's what you do for yourself. It's much harder for me to make those works than the monuments or the architecture."
"My goal is to strip things down so that you need just the right amount of words or shape to convey what you need to convey. I like editing. I like it very tight."
"You have to let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what they should think, you've lost it."
"I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode. Interest in the land and concern about how we are polluting the air and water of the planet are what make me want to travel back in geologic time-to witness the shaping of the earth before man."
Membership
American Academy of Arts and Letters
,
United States
2005
National Women's Hall of Fame
,
United States
2005
Personality
During her childhood, Maya Lin found it easy to keep herself entertained, whether by reading or by building miniature towns. She considered herself a "nerdy" person, since she didn't date or wear make-up and found it enjoyable to be constantly thinking and solving problems.
Connections
Maya is married to Daniel Wolf, a photographer. They have two daughters — India and Rachel.