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Contributor:
Indianapolis Museum of Art
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Artists: Maya Lin
Maya Lin visits the IMA Nugget Factory to discuss her career as an artist, architect and environmentalist, discussing the Vietnam War Memorial, her installation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the remaining memorial she has planned.
Maya Lin, Above and Below.
I was called in by, actually, the curator of Asian Art, Jim Robinson. They had a plaza out-of-doors where there had been funding to work on the plaza
and Jim had actually asked if I'd be interested and it's a plaza that bridges both the Asian Art Galleries, as well as the Contemporary Galleries
above on the, I guess, second and third floor and it's a very narrow plaza, 16 feet x 100 feet.
In my mind, I started looking as to what could take over the space and possibly float above your head which, again, would bridge between the contemporary art world and in the Asian Art Galleries
below and an assistant of mine, at the time, Lisa Paley was from Indiana, Indianapolis, actually. And my work always deals with
terrain, topography. I have been doing a series that focuses on rivers and lakes and waterways and it turns out, though what's above ground
in Indiana is fairly flat...She had said, "Well, did you realize one of the longest underground river systems in the world is under the state of Indiana?"
and something just clicked. And my student and I started researching it and we were able to find the White River, which flows under Indiana, which also
you can access through something called Bluesprings Cavern, so we started calling them up, beginning to get data and getting photographs. So, I came into the IMA, Max Anderson
had just started as the Director, and I presented a wire drawing that would literally describe, in cross-section, a portion of that underground cave system.
I am actually scared of the dark, and the idea of going into a cave is probably up there with things I would rather not do. And so
I guess in preparing to go spelunking and I had no idea because they had said it could be very cold, the water could be up to your knees or above. So, I went and I bought
all this gear so I wouldn't be cold and it turns out a cave is fairly temperate. Its fifty-five degrees, so it actually felt a kind of warm compared to the outside air around us
and we were in less than a foot of water or two feet of water, at that time, because depending upon the time of the year, and this is was the fall, there wasn't much water there and we never got wet
and it wasn't at all scary and we had lights on the end of our hats.
We went into the cave and we looked at three different sections, and I wanted to make something that was inspired by an actual scale. I didn't want to exaggerate the scale, I didn't want to minimize the scale,
so we had to find a section of the cave that would fit comfortably within a sixteen-foot width and we looked at, we canoed through about four different
parts of the cave, found one we liked, and then the scientist had to get to work with the Bluesprings Cavern staff and they started
giving us the data. Once we had that, we then hand-drew over the photographs and the sections, because in the end these pieces have to remain an artist drawing.
It's not as if we were taking pure science and translating it. There was a translation that goes through an artist hand-drawn quality, so then I would draw all the sections.
So, we've actually got a little flip book with all the little sections, which I keep meaning to give over to the IMA so they can make a little booklet out of it. And then
it was all fabricated by a foundry that I used in Walla Walla, Washington. So the Walla Walla Foundry cleared out a 140-foot long
warehouse and we built this thing; they bent the steel and the aluminum wires there, and we were actually able to look at it actual scale, and I went out there
and I worked with the wire. Again, because it gets worked, so it looks very much, a little bit like a hand drawing, in space, is what I am after.
And then they shipped it here, I met them and then they installed it last fall and I couldn't help. Because I think in the end part of the
gift of the Fortune family to the IMA was to help the whole terrace and the floor of the terrace was really bad and I felt a little like "Wow." I put my architect hat on because I sort of spend half my time in architecture and I thought, "Well, I can do better than this here."
And if you go to any of the drinking fountains of the IMA, you'll notice this mosaic of skinny horizontal tiles and they're slightly raised, I assume they're Indiana limestone
and I took that as the stepping off point and it's also in the Asian Art Gallery, so I wanted to do something that had sort of a very minimal yet delicate,
beautiful pattern to it, so I designed the flooring, that is now installed, because I couldn't leave the plaza being this
pretty beat-up concrete floor. So, I think, though I came in to do an art work, I couldn't resist also kind of reconditioning or redesigning a little bit of the architecture
in order to make the place a little bit more fitting.
A lot of my work is explored natural phenomena, things dealing with terrain, getting you to pay attention to things of the natural world that you might have overlooked.
Every now and again, I've installed within the constructs of a physical architectural building, normally a lot of these works are
very large scale, four acre or eleven acre land-based works. The minute you want to install within a room, within an,
even though this is an outdoor room, then, I still want to create an environmental installation that, in a way, takes over the space. Again, incorporates
something that is very much giving you an idea of something nearby that is of the natural world. So getting people to pay attention
and, maybe, they don't realize that the second longest underground river system in the world is under their feet. So you are kind of highlighting something that they might not
know about and yet at the same time you are making a site-specific work for a very specific architectural location
when you choose to install in a building or within the constructs of the building. But I think it is, like all my other works,
very much focused on looking at the natural world around us and getting viewers to pay attention to what's around.
Depends on your age, for children that are not exactly as educated with what art is, I think, it's a sense of wonderment or curiosity. Actually, I think
I believe in, I think it's, there is a minimalist tenet, the present tense of space, so that even though this is referring to an actual built, an actual existing natural phenomena
and there is that connection to a larger world. The other thing is when you walk there for the first time and you experience it that there should be just drawing
you in to a pure environment and being able to experience it almost on a empathetic level.
Oh, at this point in time, I am really focused on what will become the fifth of the last of the memorials and it's called, "Missing" or it might be called, "What is Missing?".
And it uses the premise that I am going to focus on endangered or extinct species, but I very quickly make the link that in order to protect the species
you have to protect habitats. So, it's much more about protecting endangered habitats and so I am doing so much research on it.
I think, I feel like I am back in grad school because I think I am reading about a book a week on the subject and then just beginning to get up to speed so that I can then engage
with the scientists and the researchers and get them to start feeding me information, so I can almost in a way present to the world a sampling of all the good things that are going out there,
going out in the world giving you a glimpse of what the global environment is looking like.
I think you do a piece as large as the Vietnam Memorial and maybe you get busy because you want to prove that
you're more than that piece and I think had I just done the art, if you actually put that one away and just look at the body of work of art and the complicated thing is,
I am also working on architecture, and then if you want to add the third complication, I haven't given up on these in-between pieces, the memorials that really deal with time
and history and I guess one of the problems is I have three different pathways. They all dialogue with one another. In fact,
they are very much about the environment in a lot of ways. There are a lot of threads of continuity but I basically have three different
fields going on at once, so maybe if I just had focused on one I would be less busy, but I'm in love with all three and I won't give any one up.
So, I get stuck with a fair amount of work at any given time and, hopefully, an ability to juggle.
Oh...there you go again! Now, this year it's difficult. You asked me last year and it was Enchanted, but now that we are into another year, I think The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
I saw it and I thought Julian had done just an amazing job with it and it was really, really beautiful and that's my favorite film right now.
I don't think I have a choice, though I do think I've gotten back to another love, which is science and the environment, through my art. But, no, I don't think I could be,
I mean the trouble is I am an architect and an artist. I don't think I would want to do anything else
and it would probably be very difficult for me to even imagine that.
It's amazing!
[Just the most challenging film that you are like visually...]
Oh...that when he sews up that guys eye...Ah...!
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