Assignment #6

Maya Lin is a Chinese American who was born in Athens, Ohio in October 5, 1959. She is known for artistic skills in building and designing landscape and sculptures, but one of her far most impressive artworks that was made by her is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial It was built according to her design in Washington DC in 1981when she was 21. Viewing the world through the perspective of her background and culture made her truly capture the essence of nature and inspired Maya Lin’s artistic skill and style.

            Before Maya Lin became one of America’s most recognized artists; she as raised by cultivated and artistic parents, whose influence changed her life. Maya Lin’s mother, Julia Change Lin, was a professor of literature at Ohio University and a poet. Her late father, Henry Huan Lin was a ceramicist and the dean of fine at Ohio University. Maya Lin’s parents were Chinese immigrants that fled from their homeland and settled in America in 1948. Maya Lin personal life and hobbies involve in hiking and bird watching, entertained her self of solving problem and finally she was fascinated by her father artwork, which began her to gain interested in sculpting. Lin studied architecture and sculptures at Yale University and graduated a bachelor’s degree in 1981. Since then on she has continued to do more art projects that created symbolic meaning through out America and the world.

   After watch the video at Art21, I had know idea that she was responsible of building the Vietnam Veterans Memorial nor did I know her personal background. I was kind of interested of the other projects that she work on the other videos such as the Disappearing Bodies of Water and the New York’s ecological past after Hurricane Sandy. Maya Lin is an Artist, Architect, mother, wife, environmentalist, an Asia American, a writer and activist that understand how to used her mind to created a unique work of art. What interested me the most was her way of using her imagination as a child       

  Vietnam Veterans Memorial

   Civil Rights Memorial

   Disappearing Bodies of Water

   New York’s ecological past