Carolina QuotesI’ve always been pretty fixated on water. Maybe it’s because it exists in multiple states, and you can never understand it in nature as a fixed moment in time.
Maya Lin Connected to the Carolinas
Source
"Artists at Work: Maya Lin" in Interview Magazine (10 August 2017)
- form
- interview
- year
- 2017
Cite this record
“I’ve always been pretty fixated on water. Maybe it’s because…” Maya Lin. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-81109B8FC0. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/81109b8fc0
More from Maya Lin
In art, I get to walk into my head and do whatever I want to do, to free up completely. That goes back to my roots in Athens, Ohio, my roots in nature and my feelings of connections to the environment, that everything is coalesced around being inspired by the natural world and reflecting that beauty out to others.
I would hope that artists can offer a different viewpoint, a different way of seeing the exact same data points, but maybe, because we can think a little bit outside of the norm, we can offer a new way of looking at it.
I had a simple impulse to cut into the earth. I imagine taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up and the initial violence and pain that in time would heal. The grass would grow back, but the initial cut would remain a pure, flat surface in the earth with a polished mirrored surfaced, much like the surface on a geode when you cut it and polish the edge. The need for the names to be on the memorial would become the memorial. There was no need to embellish the design further. The people and their names would allow everyone to respond and remember. It would be an interface between our world and the quieter, darker, more peaceful world beyond.