Maya Lin Essays

Maya Lin Essays Maya Lin Essay Maya Lin Essay Maya Lin Maya Lin, a graduate of Yale University, is a politically fueled artist who caused quite an uproar with her artwork. Maya Lin concentrates on reality as most of her artwork that gained nationwide attention consisted of memorial type structures that were interactive art. The Rosa Park’s memorial and the Vietnam memorial alike are both gigantic structures carved out of solid marble to remember those to impacted the development of the United States to what we are today. Maya combined several visual elements to bring her artwork alive including space, shape, and time and motion. According to our textbook, Living with Art, a shape is a two-dimensional form. It occupies an area with identifiable boundaries. Boundaries may be created by a line, a shift in texture, or a shift in color. Maya used shapes in a very creative way in both the Vietnam War memorial and the Juniata Peace Chapel pieces to be exact. To me, these two creations utilize this concept the most with the sharp angles and underground â€Å"boundaries† that almost give the memorial a triangle shape while still giving the appearance of an optical allusion at first. The Peace Chapel as also â€Å"set up† the same way utilizing the underground theme. For the Peace Chapel, large square cut rocks were placed below ground level to give a less defined boundary from far away, almost not appearing to be â€Å"sunken in† from certain angles due to the grass floor in the middle. Maya Lin also used space to her advantage, especially linear perspective in her Vietnam Memorial. The memorial is conceptually convincing but not optically convincing. More specifically, she includes two-point linear perspective where two parallel lines converge into one point. Maya also includes the concept of space in the Peace Chapel, suggesting depth but not implying it unless you view the work from a horizontal view. From a bird’s eye view, the Chapel would just appear a simply a circle of rocks, but from standing view the sculpture appears as much more than that appearing to be an area of meditation or similar to a giant â€Å"foot print. † Lastly, Maya included time and motion into her works of art. Especially noted, the Civil Rights Memorial (Rosa Park Memorial) is considered kinetic art. Kinetic art, or art that moves, is more than just a drawing on a piece of canvas; kinetic art is â€Å"living† art and Maya perused this theory to the max when including a waterfall and fountain in the memorial. Not only does the art include motion, but it also makes the art interactive, allowing the guests to splash and control the movement of the water. This element of the artwork includes the viewer to share, touch, and watch living artwork.