Transcripts For CSPAN2 Booknotes 20150117

Huge amounts of material. The newspapers, the source material is incredibly rich so that means if you want to get into it although its rich its not overwhelming. One problem with American History and why would never go into this are beyond 1775 when you get in the period of the revolution itself beyond that in the 19th century the source material becomes overwhelming especially through the war which is a lifetimes work in and of itself. In this particular come in britain you feel like a perimeter around it and you can get to grips with these people not the least because the decisionmaking is done by rather small group. Its not going to overwhelm you and the material is not going to becomes overwhelming but thats essentially my point is to reinvest myself in the primary material. [applause] a collection of her wide range of projects which includes the Vietnam Veterans memorial in washington d. C. This hourlong program is next on booktv. Cspan maya lin, what is boundaries about . Guest boundaries isi call it a visualverbal sketchbook in that its half written, half images. Its images of all my work, from the from the first memorial and then basically from 89 to 99. It spans 10 years of work art architecture, the monuments. And its about the inbetween areas. I sort of see the memorials as being hybrid, somewhere between art and architecture. But its as much about, you know, my eastwest backheritage, art and architecture, the fact that i use science a lot in my work. Its between science and art. Itsits not in terms of when i taughtwhen i thought of the wordtitle boundaries, im not thinking just of the space on either side, but the actual line that divides, and thinking of that line as being a place that takes on dimensionality, it takes on a sense of shape. Cspan how much did you have to do with the photography . Guest i actually took, i would say, maybe 30 percent, 40 percent of the pictures, and then ithen i selected everything else. Cspan whats this . Guest this is a picture taken by a friend of rocks in a stream. And again, this one is the leadin. I write a lot when i make a work, so this one is water out of stone, glass that flows like water, the fluidity of a rock stopping time. And it justsometimes i really sketch verbally, and that actually was just thoughts i had about my work. And then the book designer started working with me and started composing images. And the first four leadin photographs of the book and the end are all from nature. And iand i talk about how so much of my work is inspired by the natural landscape, and so i deliberately wanted to end and begin the book with works that are notthat are from nature. Cspan where is this picture from . Guest this is an image stock photograph taken from, i thinki cant remember which desert, but its all about you know, i see myself as existing not on either side, but on the line that divides, just like the image that starts the book is the edge of the ocean, which isagain, where does the line of water end and where does landscape begin . So the initial thought of the book is i feel i exist on the boundaries. And then its justi actually again had a friend go out and shoot that image for me. Cspan you dedicate the book to your family and your late father. Guest yeah. Cspan why . Why your father . Guest because my father and my mother played a very Strong Influence on mymy aesthetic, and my father was a ceramicist and a potter. And actually, theres an essay in the book called shaping the earth, which is aboutwhich is, in a way, how i think when youre a child, youyoure not ayoure not aware of things that are right next to you that are so obvious to you. And thethe beginning of the book is my Hands Holding a rock, and in this essay, shaping the earth, i talk about how, you know, everything, from the pots we ate fromto the furniture wewe grew up with, my father made, and it never occurred to me until after my father died. And i was looking down at him, that his hands were extremely delicate and graceful, a potters hands. You know, i thought of my father as a much stronger forcefultype person. And in the end, i say it; i say i didnt realize this, he gave me his hands. And with that came, though i couldnt pull a pot to save my life, but just his ability to work with clay, i translated into other mediums, because a lot of the sculptural materials i use are very plastic sculptural materialsclay, wax, lead, beeswaxalmost fluid, not quite hard. Glass is technically a super cooled liquid; its not a solid so everythings slightly plastic, fluid mediums. Andand i entitled that essay shaping the earth because so much of myeven my buildings started in plasticine. Its a model material that has oil as opposed to a water, so it never dries. And i basically carvecarve artworks out of the earth in a lot of what i do. Cspan where was your father located that he was a ceramicist . Guest he trained at university of washington, where my parents met, and Ohio University in athens, ohio where i grew up. And he was first a ceramics professionprofessor there, and then director of fine arts and then dean of fine arts. So i actually grew up as a child on an arts campus. I was casting bronzes by the time i was in high school. I was sort of escaping from high school to go play in the art department. Cspan one of the first things in your book is a page ofof written. Guest right. Cspan . Work or its actually printing. What is this . Guest this is the essay i wrote that i submitted along with the drawings for the competition, entry number 1026 which i think is also in the book, and i basically designed the memorial as part of a school project. And then. Cspan which memorial . Guest the Vietnam Veterans memorial. And then when i decided to enter the actual competition, i knew drawings wouldnt quite describe it, so i actually took many more months to write that description, which really was about an experiential passage of what that piece is about and how you would walk through it to experience it. And im pretty convinced its that essay, with these various serial pastel images. I think one of the jurors mademade a comment, as he was walking past in the selection process, `he must really know what hes doing to dare to do something so naive. but then they kept coming back to the design, and i think it was this, again, mix of something very, very pastoral, these sketches, very, veryvery young, and then this written essay. Cspan now what year was your design . Guest that was 1981; i designed it, and entered it in 1982. Cspan how old were you in 81 . Guest i was 2021. Cspan and where did you design it . Guest i was at yale as an undergraduate. Cspan what year were you . Guest i was a senior. In fact, as i was graduating from collegethe day i graduated, i was driven down to washington to begin to work on the memorial. Cspan now this copy that you have in this book, you say you wrote back in 1983 and put it away. Guest pretty much. I mean, i did do a little editing when it finally came around to it. But yeah, i basicallya lot of people at the time asked me if i would talk about the controversy. And i didnt, and i didnt want to, and i think that article was actually written for an arts magazine, and i couldnti couldnt get myself to submit it. I dont know why. I think i realized after i saw the documentary freedom walkand it was a documentary that came out in 95 and it covers the memorial, and it covers some of the controversy. Frieda was very careful to never let me be aware of how much taped footage she was using, because she knew that id probably never agree to let her do this documentary, because i was putting it aside. I was saying, `i dont want to deal with this. i was sort of shunting it out. And it was actually quite emotional for me to see the documentary. I didnt see iti deliberately respected her view as an artist i waited till it was completely done, and then i saw it in a theater and iii was bawling i was literallyfor two days, i was fairly upset, because it brought back a lot of, oh, tough times that i happily had kind of put away. Cspan before we ask you more about that, where do you live now . Guest new york. Cspan what do you do now . Guest i have a studio. I work downtown, and i basically spend my time between art and architectural projects pretty much all over the country. I dont take on too many architectural projects because i sbecause i want to spend as much time on the artworks. I dont want to have a firm; i dont want to have a large place. I have maybe two to three assistants at any given time some trained in art, some in architecture, because again, i can very rarely find someone who mixes the two and can balance. Andand thenlike right now im finishing up three or four or five buildings, and ill go back into my studio. So i, again, split my time, sort of back and forth. I juggle. Cspan how much education do you have . Guest how much education . I guess i went four years undergrad in architecture at yale, took a year off to build the memorial, tried to go back to Architecture School at harvard, found myself taking one too many shuttles down to washington to testify, cause thats when the controversy was fully blown, went back to yale in 83 and finished up my masters degree there. Cspan do you have a family . Guest i have a family. I have a husband, daniel wolf, whos an art dealer, and two childrentwo young children. Ive got two girls, a threeyearold anand a 16monthold. So i basically am going to be spending as much time playing with them as working in my studio. So im going to disappear for a while. Cspan go back to what you said earlier. You said the `controversy. guest yeah. Cspan what was the controversy . Guest you knowi mean, in a weird way, i dont i briefly talk about it in the book, what was the controversy . The controversy was that people didnt like the design that was selected after it was selected. And i think people felt that on a lot of different reasons. It was not your traditional color. It was not your traditional shape. It was not at all vertical. It listed all the names; it did so chronologically. It was not usual. And i thinkit also, i think, was controversial partially because of who designed it. I was asian, and i think that was misinterpreted the wrong way. And so i think for a brief period of timeand i do want to say it was unusual how short a time it took to get this memorial builtit was, i think, very hotly debated. I think there were many criticisms that someone as young as i was, who could never have experienced or understood that war, how could she be the one left to design something . And i think oddly enough because i was too young to have been embroiled in the politics ii had made a choice; i actuallyunlike many of the designs that ive worked on since then, i consciously decided not to read anything about the politics surrounding that war. I made a call that the politics shouldnt get in the way of this work, that you were going to have people whose names are listed, who believed they should be there, and those who protested it, whowho went because they were drafted. I wanted both sides to be able to rest and not overtly get involved in forming an opinion. And i think this happens in many of thosemy works. And i think a lot of people say, `well, youre a political artist, and i would go, `no not necessarily. i am drawn or have been drawn to work on issues war, race, gender. But i dont have an overt political statement that i want to get across. If anything, my approach to the memothe Vietnam Memorial was to make a piece that would be neutral and yet would ask us to face these individual lives lost on an individual basis. Now thats new. Thatsto experience oneonone. And the veterans chose to have the names listed. Though i designed this for a class, i found out halfway in the design that they requested all the names to be listed. That inherently is a political statement, that we want to recognize these individual lives lost. And itand i think a lot of artisan designers, when they saw that, almost looked at that qrequirement as a chore. So theyd find a form, and then they were trying to stuff the names on it. I basically allowed the names to be the memorial. Thats it. Because in a wayi mean, i went back to the idea of whati mean, a lot of criticism was it was abstract, you know . `its modernist, its cold, its inhuman. and i kept thinking, `well whats more realistic to bring back someones memory than the persons name . no one image, no one edifice is going to recollect and react to you the way a persons name will. Cspan you mentioned about being asian. Where were you born . Guest athens, ohio. Cspan and where were your parents born . Guest my mother was born in shanghai and my father was born in beijing. Cspan and youyou say in the book that you designed this before you saw the land. Guest no. I thought up what ideas i had about how i wanted toto be honest about war, how i wanted itto make it very honest about the names and aboutabout acknowledging loss. I thought about what a memorial, you know, to the vietnam war should be. In terms of thoughts generally behind it, then i put all that thinking aside and i went to see the site. And it was on the site that i just decided id cut open the earth. Cspan had you entered yourthethe contest . Guest no. I basicallyit was the fall of 1981. No. Cspan and your class. Guest . The springno the spring of 80. Not thethe fall of 1980. Were in class, were studying funereal architecture. A group of usas a senior at yale, you can choose your thesis. About six of us got together and decided we wanted to study architecture and how it relates to mortality. In other words, how man deals with his own mortality in the built form. We found an adviser, professor andy burr, who agreed to be our professor and we started designing projects. You know, one was a memorial to world war iii. I cant remember some of the other assignments. Someone saw a poster up, Vietnam Veterans memorial competition, and we thought, `what a great way to end the course. Well have our own design charette. and so i designed it, but i stari had started researching it when i was researching the world warthe memorial to world war iii. And so i had started working into an idea of, `well, what is a war memorial . Whatwhat has it been historically . What is it now . andand then i went to see the site. It was around thanksgiving time i had actually gone to see my parents, and then on my way back, i rendezvoused with a bunch of the students in the class and we went to see the site. And it was a very cold day. I took one look at the site and i actually thought it was a beautiful park, and again, i didnt want to make a piece that would overwhelm the site. Cspan got some video that was shot yesterday, and this is, you know, near the end of october. Guest right. Cspan and on the screen there is the capitol to show you kind of a perspective for someone whos never been here. Guest right. Cspan this is what you saw when you came. Guest yeah. Well, i didnt see that. Cspan no, but you saw this piece of land. Guest i saw this beautiful park, and i think in the end essay, i say i still want the site to remain a park, a place where people could come to it, that nothing i. Cspan thats the lincoln memorial. Guest right. Cspan i didnt mean to interrupt. I wanted people to see where it was. Go ahead. Guest nothing i didi still wanted you to be able to walk on to the site. And again, anything ive done has been a merger with the landscape. Its not been about creating some large, powerful form that in a way supplants the land. So its about working with. I mean, theres a realtheres sort of a harmony going on. And in a way, you know, ii basically had wonderful agreementsdisagreements with the architects of record kupelecci, because they could not understand why i wouldnt want to make such a thin, veneer surface. This is a monument. Make those walls two to three feet thick. And i kept going, `no, no, no. I dont see it as like a physical presence inserted into the land. I literally see it as a geode. Im polishing the earth and putting the names on that surface. cspan you can see there how thin it is. Guest yeah. Howits very, very thin. Cspan you said that the black granite couldnt be bought from canada or sweden. Guest yeah. I mean, wei mean, this is the funny thing. It was very odd. All of a sudden, we were working with the veterans abouteverything got politicized, down towe looked at swedish black granite, we looked at Canadian Black granite, we looked at South African black granite. We settled on indian black granite. And i remember one of the comments from the veterans was it would be very hard to find a granite from canada or sweden because, again, there were draft dodgers who went there, so wethey didntthey wanted a neutral territory. Cspan why . I mean, what was the. Guest again, it was highlyby that point, it had become fairly highly political and i think there were questions about one of the juries being a member of the communist party, things like that. They wanted the thing to remain as neutral as possible because i think at that time, it had gone in under the carter administration. It was being built under the reagan administration. And you had, basically, an attemptat one point, i think a politician said, `even though this is a neutral statement, we need to politicize the design. and there was actually a real question as toat the apex, because i had not put ananything there. Well, they came up with a paragraph, and a paragraph that would adhave added sort of a political meaning. And i kept going, `well, weve got 1959 and its yea high, and weve got 1975 and itslets put in three lines. And again, just keep it very simple, keep it so that you dont add a political meaning. You let people come to this place and come away with their own thoughts. cspan weve got some video where one of the park rangers is, you know, scratching. Guest right. Cspan . Theon the piece of paper for somebody who wants to see the name. Did you think that would happen . Guest i didnt think past one thought. I knew people would touch the names, and i actually knew people would cry. Ii dont know why i knew that other than that, i really didnt think of how it would be read as being asuch a popular piece. I thinki mean, i think its the only way i got through that time. I only could think of one persons reaction to it always. And thats the way i always am. Its a oneonone experience, no matter how many people are there. Cspan you wanted the names chronological . Guest mmhmm. Cspan and they arent . Guest they are. Cspan they are chronological . Guest absolutely. Cspan but chronological ininin time, but not bynot by alphabetical. Guest chronological in time no, absolutely. The chronology, to meand it begins and ends at the apex. Its like an open book. 59, the beginning of the war, with the short prologue; 75, at the bottom on the left. Its like an open book, the beginning and thethe end of the war meet, the war comes full circle. Its a closed time line, but its broken by the earth. By having the names be listed chronologically, any returning veteran can find his or her time place on the memorial. And in so doing, if you know one call, youll find others in close proximity. And ii was trying to tap into a sense of bringing them back to that immediate memory. Theres something calledyou know, ii talk about stopping time, where present, past, futureit all kind of comes to a point. And by having to relive that past, it forces you to face it and then you have to walk out intointo the present time. Cspan tell the story about how you found out you had won. Guest oh, its a its a strange one. I was in class, actually. And i had entered the competition as an exercise. You know, students do it. Its good practice. I believed in it. But, youyou know, you dont enter Something Like this at the age of 20, 21. You forget about it. I get a call from my roommate, and she calls me out of class and goes, `you just got a phone call from washington. Theyre calling back in five minutes. youve never seen someone run faster out of a class. My professor was sort of wondering whats going on. And they called up. Some people that said, `well were from the Vietnam Veterans memorial fund. Could we come ask you a few questions about your design . and i was convinced i was number 100, not a big deal. They just were asking me a few questions, like drainage or Something Like that, and they all flew up. And there were three of them and they sat down in my dorm room. And i think itwhat they told me later is they were freaking out because i wasnt just a student, i was an undergraduate and they were going to an undergraduate dorm in Saybrook College at yale. And theyre all sort of hunched into ourthe living room, and colonel shay was talking in this very sort of unemotional way about, `well, this was the largest competition ever held, open to everyone, and you won. and then he kept going. He didnt miss a beat. And im, likejust listening and my roommate catches it before i do. But againi mean, im a funny person in that it took meuntil it was built, i did not believe this would get built, thati knew it was formalistically extremely different. And im also someone who never like, countsyou know, counts on anything until its real. And so i basically braced myself, because having studied competition processes, as an architecture student will, its very rare that something gets built the way it was conceived. It just doesnt happen that way. Cspan did youwhatd you get forfor building it, for designing this . Guest oh, i goti got an award. I got an award. Guest they didnt pay you . Guest no, theythey gave me athethe competition award. Cspan and there were 1,400 entries . Guest yeah. Cspan when did you know that it was going to be tough . What was the first time you said, `this isnt going to be all that much fun . guest i think very early on it wasthey had shuttled me downthey had flown me down to washington to meet with the whole vietnam veteran fund. And im actually veryshy person, and i didnt know what to do. And they wanted the thing kept very closed, so i called my parents, but they didnt want me goingtalking to anyone, so i was fairly isolated. And it was the very initial press conference. And they made a model. They didnt talk to me, they just made the model and they had pushed the design way to the back. And i said at one point, `you know, that model isnt accurate you really want to split the difference between for`no no, no, its just a press conference model. Dontdont worry about it. and im going, `it is such a simple piece, everything matters. and i could justi instantly read that there was going to be interesting issues coming up as to how Something Like this was going to get realized. And i actuallyi talk about it in the book a little, that i basically went through a very internal, very tough struggle as to who the architect of record would be, alwho would work with me to get the thing built. And ii think at the timei think they took one look at me and to be fair to them, they thought, `shes a kid and she cantshe certainlyyou know and i did a lot of publicity because itit was sort of a direct funddriven situation andand theyand i was caught doing a lot of interviews. But basically, all i was concerned about was making sure that what iwhat i envisioned got built. So i think from the start, we had sort of cross purposes. They sort of assumed, `oh, you wouldnt want to be interested andand youre just a kid. Andand its so simple. Its so simple. well, and im like, `i am obsessive about detailing, down to the whatever. anyway, the end result is the architect of record selected was whocesar pelli, who was then dean of yale, had recommended. I think he was the absolute right choice. But there was a little bit of an internal power struggle that left grudges. And i think those grudges left a little bit of ill will, so that they didnt know where i was coming from and i didnt know where they were coming from. And it all wasyou know, it all smoothed over in the end, but it left the entire process a little difficult going through. Cspan the nameone of the few names you use in the book is ross perot. Guest right. Cspan what do you think of his involvement . Guest you know, ross was part of a group that basically felt that the veteranswhat they really neededin fact, i think he came over once. I was working in the Architects Office and he said `arentarearent you sure they just dont need a parade . and i was sitting there going, `no, thats actually not whatthey need something that makes them realfeel the catharsis. You have to face the situation in order to get over it. If you pretend it never happened, if you pretend it wasnt traumatic, thats not going to help you. so i basically saw ross and company as a group of very wellintentioned people. We just basically had a huge disagreement as to what would help. Cspan i want to ask you about two statues. Guest yes. Cspan i know theyre not your favorite topic. The first one well show. Guest right. Cspan . Is the statue of the soldiers. Do you know when this was built . Guest 82, 83. Cspan and why was it built . Guest i would say it was builtand it was a done deal before anyone had seen or experienced the memorialand that a compromise had to be agreed upon. When perot and Company Started fighting the fund, and they were very admiral to defend the designwe were fighting for groundbreaking. Groundbreaking was not allowed to go forward, unless the idea of a compromise, a more human, more figurative work, would be built somewhere. Cspan did you design this . Guest no, i did not. Sculptor Frederick Hart waswas given the commission. Now originally, those statues, which are higher than 10 feetand the wall is only 10 feet htalltheir original intention was to place the statues right at the apex, so their heads would be poking up above the design. I fought that very hard. Ii can say that, yes, at the time, they didnt understand what the piece would be. They thought it was going to be this very cold, modernist, ivy leaguer doing this intellectual thing. The sad thing is through the course of the summer, i actually was told by Park Service Officials that the thensecretary of the interior watt would visit the site quite often. And at one point, hehe apparently told a park service employee, `you know, its too bad. I kind of like this piece. but it was too late. They had already decided on the addition. So then it became a battle as to where those statues would be placed, and i can only be happy that they were moved outside, so that you dont have a confusion of two works, working right on top of each other. And you basically havei mean i say it. I mean, its sort of like the memorialthat placement, in a way, conmemorializes the battle because you had an idea of figurative is lessfigurative is more responsive to humans thanthan the abstraction of the names. Cspan the other statues are the nurses. Guest the nursesmy only comment on that is onei again, i heard someone say `well, if the three men werent there, we wouldnt want the three women. and its a pity thatthat basically, one is added to balance out the other, and both i find totally ununnecessary. Cspan and when was this . Guest this one, i cant remember. Cspan but it was later . Guest it was later. Cspan and it sits a little bit farther. Guest it sits on the other end, farther away. So that basically, its almost like the one is to balance off the earlier one, the women there to balance the men. The men, i think, had they only waited till this was up, they would have understood that it is a memorial meant for the living, as well as the dead. See, their argument was, `oh no, thats for the dead. We need something for the living soldier, when they didnt really understand what the impact would be. Cspan how did this whole experience change your life . Guest oh, i went right back into graduate school and got to work, very hard at work. And i meani mean, i think the body of the work thats in the book is 10 years, 89 to 99. And its a body of work that spans monuments, artworks and architecture. And i think, you know, the civil rights memorial was the work i completed after the vietnam. And in so doing, the Southern Poverty Law Center asked me toif i would consider making a memorial to civil rights, and i was of two minds. One, i was very aware of how large the Vietnam Memorial would be in peoples minds. And if i did yet another memorial, would i indeed be typecast . But secondly, i was stunned that there hadnt been a National Civil rights memorial. And as i started reading about the history of the civil rights movement, i was shocked. I didnt even realize that in 1963, someone was killed for using athe wrong bathroom; that even though i was a child growing up in these time periods, i hadnt been really taught it in school. And how frightening it is that we can lose track of history, we can forget so quickly. And so i began to think of this piece as a in a way, a teaching tool, a historical teaching tool. Cspan its hard to see iti mean, itits hard to see what it really does here. Guest right. Cspan im going to show it again in your book. Where is it located . Guest its located at montgomery, alabama, at the Southern Poverty Law Centers headquarters. And it consists of a water table, which is a conically shaped, very asymmetrical table its only 31 inches tall, with water coming up out of the that holecenter hole. Cspan right there. Guest . And streaming over text. And what the text is, its a time line. And it begins in 1954, brown vs board of education. The text goes around clockwise ending with Martin Luther kings assassination in 68. It intertwines peoples deaths with legislative events, issues that happened, a riot happened a protest happened, someone was killed. And again, what i was trying to say is that, in history, this was a peoples movement. And sometimes one persons actions led to better legislation, and sometimes legislation led to someones death through a riot. And its like a causal effect. And so what i was trying to attempt was giving people a brief glimpse of what that era was about. Cspan now whats this . Guest this is the womens table, which is for yale university. I was askedits a sculpture. Its a water table, again, where water comes up. And if you go to the next page i dont know if you can seeno. Cspan not right. The next page is. Guest no, i guess its before then. Cspan its the page before it, yeah. Guest page before. Its hard to tell. Cspan its hardits hard to read this, so. Guest theres a spiral of numbers coming out of that water font, a group of zeroes. Then it goes to single digits, double digits. Cspan goes around there, yeah. Guest . Ends with quadruple digits. What does it do . Well, i think thenpresident Benno Schmidt had asked me to design a sculpture dedicated to women at yale, and i had no idea what that meant. He was thinking thatit was 1988 when he called me in 8889. 69 to 89 would mark the 20th anniversary of coeducation at yale. And so i think he was thinking commemorate that. And i started researching all about the history of women at yale, and i started discovering, you know, the very first class of women was in the 1890s. It was a school of art. And before that, women were allowed to sit in on classes and they were called silent listeners. And i thought, `thatthats sort of a horrible phrase. Were there, but werewereyou know, were seen, but were not heard. so i counted them. So that spiral of numbers counts the women atat yale enrolled both undergrad and grad, from when there were none to the date in which i put the piece in, which was 1993. And so the enrollment stops there. And its an openended time line. Unlike the vietnam, which is closed, the civil rights, which we use the gap to sort of signify past and future, and then the yale table marks a beginning. But, of course, there is no end, and its a spiral. Cspan how long does it take you to do Something Like the civil rights memorial . Guest oh, they all take about two to three years, from beginning to end. Cspan what do you do . Guest i sit down and i research and read for maybe three months, six months sometimes nine months. For the artworks especially, i donti dont have a deadline. I basically tell people these projects take two to three years, but i will not work on ayou have to submit an idea by this time, because i dont want to force it. So i go through a very studied process, and then. Cspan is this you . Guest this is me climbing all over what will become the civil rights memorial. Im checking the seams on it in the quarry. Cspan where is this . Guest this is in a quarry in vermont, which put the piece together for me. So basically, its two to three years to make a piece, just figuring out how the water would flow. The water doesnt drop at the lip. It turns the edge of that piece and flows to the base, so you dont get wet when you walk up to it. So there are many technical aspects. In fact, all of these workstheres a clock in there, eclipse time, and actually a clock i just dedicated at stanford university. The one at stanford, its a 14tonno, 11ton piece of stone that tells the minutes the seconds, the hours, and then what you dont realize is the entire piece of stone is making a rotation. It makes one rotation every year. So its slowly moving. So every time i seem towhen ive made the artworks, ive sort of reinvented and ive had to kind of figure out how to get it built. And so. Cspan jumping to the end, this is the Langston Hughes library haley farm, clinton, tennessee. Guest right. Cspan and well pull backrichard halls working our camera hereto show us this. Explain this. Guest this is a library. I was asked by Marian Wright edelman. She invited me down to haley farm. Its in tennessee. And she wanted me to think about designing a library and a chapel. And i saw this barn. It was an existing barn. It was not being used. It was completely derelict. Andand i asked marian, `what about putting the library in this barn . and so i cut open the barn. Whatever is new is sort of on the inside skin, and i left the outside very raw, rustic, except to maximize the amount of daylight. And then as you walk up, one of the cribs that raises the barn up is your entrylevel stairs and elevator upstairs. The other one is ais a bookstore. And you go upstairs, and the entire inside is completely new with a view out to the barn. And so its all about mixing old and new, creating a raiseda reading room up sort of overlooking the pond. And that pond is also where im going to site the chapel, which im presently working on. So the idea was, again, im fixated in time, old and new. So ive done something old and something completely new. Cspan who was Langston Hughes . Guest Langston Hughes was an afroafricanamerican writer, and actually, the sponsor of the chapeli mean, of the library. When regio and his wife, louise, requested that thethe chapel bei mean, the library be dedicated to him. Cspan where is clinton tennessee . Guest clinton, tennessee is very near knoxville, and it is the site of alex haleys oldhis estates. Cspan and do you have to politically agree with whatevers going on in these things . I know you said you werent veryyou werent trying to make political statements but do you have to agree with the politics or you cant do it . Guest iyes, pretty much. I mean, they have to be near and dear to me. And i think i take oni work with a lot of educational institutions, certainlike right now, im working for Aaa Foundation called the greyston foundation. Were building a bakery in yonkers. All their profitsthey bake all of the brownies for ben jerrys, and theyall the profits go to housing for the homeless and aids hospice. I get drawn in the architecture to working with a lot of people that actually probably wouldnt consider bringing in design, because they think they cant afford it. And like i finished for nyu, an asianamerican department. We had aboutoh, we had about three to four months, start to finish. The director called me up and said, `you know, i dont know if you have the time. but i actually am challenged sometimes by that because if i can make good design, where normally you wouldnt see a design, its sort of a joy. Cspan how often, when somebodyyou introduce yourself to somebody and say, `im maya lin, do they immediately know the name . Guest nobody knows me. Cspan nobody . Guest nobody knows me. I mean, i have been recognized so seldomly, and i like that. The worksi mean, Everybody Knows the Vietnam Memorial, but nobody would connect my face to it or even my name. And ii kinim lucky that way. Because i really do believe the works are out there and theyre very public, but that allows me to remain very, very private which again, its that dichotomy. Can you be very public, you know . And in this world, im lucky. But i dont think in art and architecture, youre recognizable normally outside of your fields. And itsitsits nice. I am so, you know, not a celebrity, and i never will be andknock on wood. Cspan now what happens when they find out that youre the person that designed the lincolni mean, the Vietnam Memorial . Guest people have been incredibly kind and warm and, in a way, theyve shared with me very moving, very personal stories about that piece. And i think its amazing. I mean, i dont take it for granted that that first piece out works so well for so many people. As an artist, its a doubleedged sword, because you basically have to move on, and you move on emotionally as soon as its done. So, you know, in a funny way when a lot of people say, `you know, what do you do for an encore . well, frankly, like the image youre looking at there is somethingthe wave field, which is the sculpted ways of earth. Thats technically stumped me more, in a way, than the memorial. Cspan explain this. Where is it . Guest this is in ann arbor michigan, at the university of michigan for the francoisxavier bagnoud Aerospace Engineering building. And it is a 10,000squarefoot artwork i installed that is based on my studies of fluid dynamics in flight. I came across aan image of a repetitive water wave and knew the piece would be about that. Thats probably one of my strongest artworks, and that led to a body of work called topologies, which went inside a gallery and deal with the landscape. Theres aa piece in there that is, if you go the other way. Cspan yeah. Ive seen it. Ill have to find it. Whatswhat. Guest youre close. Youre very close. Can i. Cspan sure. Guest right there. Cspan thank you. Guest and that is. Cspan its hard to see on camera. Guest its very hard to see on camera. Cspan what is it . Guest if you pan back, if youif the camera goes back a little bit, you can see the entire piece. Its a 16foot by 18foot sculpture made out of cut particle board. Im very interested in stratographicstratographic layers of the earth. Except this one, i stacked vertically. And its just an undulating wave field brought into a museum environment. So how could i take this largescale landscape aesthetic and bring it inside the neutral grounds of a museum . So again, im rightim actually right now working on a series of mappings that will be almostwell, i cant really say, but theylltheyll deal with the topography of the ocean floor. Cspan there isi dont know if its a memorial, but work that youve done in here for the rockefeller. Guest right. Cspan . Building Rockefeller Foundation in new york. Guest yeah. Its called 10 Degrees North, and its actuallyits centerpiece is a map of the earth. But when you first see it, it looks like much more of an abstracted landscape. And as you walk up to it, and especially from the second floor of their lobby, you realize its a map of the world. Shall i find it . Itsyoure very close to it. Its right here. Sorry. Cspan its hard to juggle when youhere we go. There we go. Guest its right there. Its a series of benches tables, sculptures surrounding this entry area of which the centerpiece is this cut in stone map of the earth. And water is percolating up from the different trenches, the jave trench, the japan trench, and the water is the sealevel water. Why is it called 10 Degrees North . You know, when i started researching about the Rockefeller Foundation, the wellbeing of mankind throughout the world, well, when we start helping out, its always through our perspective. And maps are inherently very political. And any rectangular projection of the earth is distorted. And most of our views are a mercator projection where youve taken an equal projection from the equator. Well, theres much more land mass in the Northern Hemisphere towards the top of the north pole than in the south. So ourit enlarges those areas so our images in north america and asia are actually much larger than they really are. So i asked a map maker to take the projection from 5 degrees, 10 degrees, 15 degrees, trying to make it a little more equivalent. So its all subtly about how maps are very political, and we actually have to be careful from what perspective were looking at. Cspan you also talk in your book about this business about being an asianamerican. Guest right. Cspan . And that youyou were born in athens, ohio. Guest right. Cspan what year did your parents come over to the United States . Guest they immigrated in the mid40s. They came out separately. My mother came out on a scholarship to go to smith college. My dad came out a little earlier. And hethey met at the university of washington. And they brought us up, my brother and i, we dont speak chinese. It was an age before you were brought up bilingual. They wanted us to fit in, and we did. My, you know, friends will say `youreyoure so ohioan youre so midwestern. Ive never met a moreand then little by little in my late 20s, 30s, as i started developing my work, im realizing i am really pulled to as much of an asian aesthetic, this nondidactic, you sort of bringallow people to bring their thoughts. Itits more subtle, its its about education and self introspection. Anyway i rebelled against a lot of western european architectural great works. I ended up studying in japan for a summer, just so i could absorb some of that cultural climate. Ii went to kyoto and spent you know, a good deal of that summer there. And, you know, im chinese, so what am i doing with an affinity towards japanese architecture . I always felt a little guilty. And then my mother takes my brother and i back to china, and we get to visit my fathers childhood home. And. Cspan to fukien . Guest fukien province. Cspan province. Where is it . Guest its built on a river itsgod, its near xuzhou. Im terrible. We sort of did a circuit. We went from shiyan, shanghai, xuzhou, then into fukien. And im looking at this house or what remains of it, and its a japanesestyle house. And im going to my mother `mother, what is this . and its, like, `oh, your grandmother lovedyour grandmother loved japanese architecture, and they had this house built in the style of a japanese house. So there i amobviously, my dad grew up in this house. He designed much of the furniture in the way out of our house in athens, and iyou know, you grow up and you absorb what your cultural surrounding is. So iiagain, something clicked, and im going, `thats perhapsthis is where i get this instrong affinity towards sort of the shinto shrines of japan, thethe japanese courtyardstyle houses. its also, i mean, the amazing ability they have of framing the landscape. So no matter where you are in the building, youre really asking someone to look out into a very specific view of nature. Cspan is your mom still alive . Guest yes, she is. Shesshes retired. She lives in athens, ohio. And im actually going to go back and spend, with my kids, a very long thanksgiving with her, which im looking forward to. Cspan did your father live long enough to see all this . Guest unfortunately not, and i think thatsthats painful to me. He didnt evenhe didnt get to see the dedication of the civil rights memorial. Cspan did he get to see the dedication of the Vietnam Memorial . Guest yes, he did. And that was great. And, you know, i mean, you just wish for certain things, and i think when youreyoure younger, you think your parents are always going to be there for you. So my father was considerably older than my mother, so, yeah the book is very special because its dedicated to him. So much is about him, in a way. Cspan when did you decide to do a book . Guest after i saw the documentary. Cspan in five95 . Guest yeah. Cspan and then how did you go about doing this book . Guest well, in a way, the writing was all there, because as ive made these works, ive written a lot about them. Sometimes i started with wa written sketch. But to put it all together, i deliberately made a book that its size is odd. Itswell, is it a Coffee Table Book or is it a textbook . So its all about ambiguity. And in so doing, i deliberately askedi chose the publisher simon schuster, which is much more known for, in a way written books. And then i asked michael rock of 2x4 to be the book designer, whos coming out of sort of the high Architecture Design world. And i watched as they just, at times, did not know how to communicate with one another because heres simon schuster, and theyre really used to dealing with book designers who do the jacket, thank you very much. And heres michael rock, used to totally controlling the show. Andand it was a nice, nice collaboration tussle at times thatthat built up the work. But in the end, theirthethe idea that the text and the writing would be an equal balance to the images was sort of the hybrid i wasi was trying to attempt here. Cspan how long did it take you . Guest three years. Cspan and its. Guest everything takes three years. Dont ask me why. Cspan and at the very end, you talk about you haveyou want toyouyou. Guest one last one, right . Cspan you dont like the monument business. Guest i dont like the monument business. Well, i retired after 89, didnt want to get typecast. I hope you can appreciate thethe position. People were joking, `you know put up a sign, monuments by maya. i mean, i basically stepped away from it, except i realized i have always been, since i was a child, very concerned about what man is doing to the environment i look at us, and, you know, scientists have called what were going through the sixth largest extinction of the history of the planet. Cspan what is this, by the way, while were talking . Guest this is an aerial satellite image of the earth and i actually dont remember where this is taken from. But again, i study mappings, aerial views, glacial patterns again, taking inspiration, like iive contacted nasa. This is an image i took of an ice cave, the detail of. Cspan did you take this picture . Guest yeah, i took this picture. Cspan where . Guest this is in seattleoutside of seattle. Its in anear pilcheck, where i did a residency blowing glass. Cspan and so whats that last monument going to look like . Guest well, thats the interesting thing. Its going toif you think of a Memorial Monument not existing in one place but in many places all over the world, each site different, each site unique, all taken together, they will help give us an idea ofin a way the health of the planet from Global Climate change to land mass to extinction and endangered species. I can imagine one of the sites i would love to make out of a huge toxic waste dump. So ill try to reclaim a site, maybe make one out of garbage. Some of them will be in existing parks, trying to get them to be larger, because i think if were really going to talk about preserving by diversity, we have to talk about very large areas that wewe leave untouched. I dont know, i literally started it with the book. I start with the sketch, i met with a group of biodiversity scientists, experts in the field from plant to mammals. And we met last tuesday, and imy guess is ill take a year to quietly ask a lot of questions and then surface with a team. But if i could do something that would help us prevent this mass extinction, that would be what id really love to do. I mean, ii sort ofiim starting with yellowstone. Im actually doing an artwork within yellowstone. Theyre our First National park and id love to try to help make antarctica our First International park. Because conceptually, what that would mean is that, globally were working together to protect the land. Cspan was there ever a time in all thatthose early 80s where you syou wished that this had never happened . Guest yeah. At times. I mean, yes and no. I think what i did was i just forgot about it, which ii have a lovely habit of doing, and just focusing on what im interested in at the time. Im prettyin that sense, i think being an artist saved me because i basicallyi just tunnel in. I have tunnel vision. So im inintensely interested in what im working on now than what i did, you know, 10 years ago, two years ago. So in an odd way, what im interested in is the learning process i go through in making each of these works, and then i kind of move on from it. Cspan wheres your brother today . Guest hes in new york. He actually moved back to new york, teaching at a small college. And hes doing his artwork. Hes actuallyi mean, his poetry. Hes working on his second volume of poetry. And hell be in an art show in chelsea inin the spring. So hes basicand hes teaching creative writing, which is what he really wants to do. So both of us sort of followed in our parents footsteps and have takenyou know werewere in the arts pretty solidly. Cspan whats his name . Guest ton lin. Cspan and you have three names, maya ying lin. Guest ying lin, yeah. Cspan ying pronounced ing . Its pronounced ing . Guest yeah. Silent y. Cspan ying . Guest ng. Its my chinese name. Its my chinese given name. And it means precious stone. Cspan whered you meet your husband . Guest in new york at a dinner party. Cspan and he does . Guest hes an art dealer photography, specialty is the 19th century photographs. Cspan does he work with you at anyin any of these projects . Guest no, hes very sweet and supportive, though. He puts up with my incredible nervousness as im making these things. Hes actually got an incredibly good eye. Cspan when you went back to china, what was your reaction overall to. Guest well, i had just come from japan, and i found japan veryvery formal. And i think, you know, they actually thought i was japanese in japan. And if youre English Speaking if you dont speak japanese, they look at you with a little bit of odd suspicion. And so youre not fromyouyou left. Andand i got to china, and youre overseas chinese. They embrace you. They welcome you. Youre coming home. Ititit was a very welcoming feeling. Andand then i got to meet my relatives, a lot of them for the very first time. And for someone who growbasically grew up isolated with a family of three other people, it was pretty wonderful. Cspan didwhat was their reaction to your involvement with the Vietnam Memorial . Did they understand that . Guest theythey understood that i was basically an architect. I think imim following in the footsteps of my aunts, my halfsister on my fathers side, where essentiallyi mean, i have a funny legacy, which i wasnt really that apparent of. Lynn way yin and Lang Su Chang were my aunt and uncle. They were, like, sort of the strong art historians of china. They catalogued most of the architectural workshistorical works of china. They also helped to bring modernism. They studied at university of pennsylvania, went back to china in the communist revolution, and they designed Tiananmen Square. So i was out there on the plaza with one of the officials saying, `well, what do you think of Tiananmen Square . and im going, `itits very large. what was i going to say . Obviously, Lang Su Chang, after my aunt had passed away, later on, realized how modernism had heyou know, bringing modernism to china has helped start, you know, tearing down a lot of the old parts. And he tried to prevent it and tried to preserve. And he fell out of favor at that time, because everything was still about progress. But they went through the same thing we went through, which is why we lost pennyou know, penn station in new york, where modernism was going to come in and wipe the slate clean. And then 10 years later, we all turned around and said, `my god whatwhat have we taken down . so you kind of have to mix the old and the new. Cspan this is the book weve been talking about. Its called boundaries by maya lin. This is the cover. It sells retail, 40. Thank you very much for joining us. 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