HomeMy WebLinkAbout962191.tiff November 3, 1996 c: f;6
Weld County Commissioners
Barbara J. Kirkmeyer, Chair CAT] ..
P.O. Box 758
Greeley, Colorado 80632
Ref: Ramsay-Shockey Open Space
Dear Commissioners:
Today in the Denver Post, USA Weekend, I was taken by the article about Maya Lin.
Most striking to me was the picture "Wave Field" done in what I would call berm art.
It reminded me of a trip Kay and I took in southern Ohio to the Miamisburg Mound State
Park where the Miami Indians made a serpentine mound on a hill. I am sure that it has
been featured in National Geographic.
Kay was a fused glass artist, her sense of design was much admired by many artists.
My house is a virtual museum, I am surrounded by over one hundred pieces of her work.
It occurred to me that using some of her designs, and incorporating them into berm art
would enhance the lower portion of the place with some interesting features.
I would want them to be relatively low, planted with the same grass that is in the area, so
they would be subtle and blend in without disrupting the natural setting.
My drawings of these bowls and wall pieces do not do them justice, I cannot indicate
depth. I am handy with earth moving equipment, or would hire the work done. At any
rate this would be at my expense. The ground will be freezing soon, so it probable won't
be done until Spring. It needs to be done before you make improvements.
I want to add a clause to the contract that I will have the option to do this work if I so
decide. Your suggestions are invited.
Sincerely,
Robert D. Ramsay
ej1C-- et, . pi • Pat; DOLL) 962191
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MAYA LIN : i
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Making art
that . .
, ,
Since the Vietnam memorial was dedicated on Veterans Day 1982, if
Maya Lin has let her work speak for itself.Now,in a rare interview,
she sheds light on the impact of her larger-than-life art. By Jim Sexton
V.
-, aya Lin has just flown back from visiting
- her mother in Ohio,and arrives in her
Manhattan studio a few minutes late and
`I out of breath."I'm not awake yet,"she
m announces,and promptly sets about making tea.
"v?� Lin wears no makeup and looks great.Today she's
'� dressed casually in brown work boots and black
' ' jeans.She's ready to dive into a new project.
iLin is best known as the designer of the Vietnam
Inset:Lin, - Veterans Memorial in Washington,D.C.,and the
then 23,at ,/, 'a" Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery,Ala.She created nam memorial as a class project.Her idea beat those of
the opening / • ;no,.. both memorials—known for their stunning power to 1,420 other entrants in the nation's largest-ever design
ceremony for - evoke deep emotion—at a young age,but has refused competition.Today she only reluctantly talks about the
the Vietnam / to be stereotyped as a memorial-maker.At 37,Lin has trauma that followed."I had no idea who these people
Veterans / built houses,sculpted the earth and created the kind of were that were attacking me....I was clueless,literally.
/
Memorial large-scale,powerful art that marks her as one of the Even though I'd gone to college.I was still in a way that
i most importantpublic artists of the centur
y,with 14 country girl from Athens,Ohio."
major works.
- Yet Lin avoids celebrity as if it were a bad rash."I'm art of tin's strength and creativity comes from those
not in entertainment,"she says,frowning."My name is roots,at once deeply American but also influenced
less known than the works I do,which I'm happy for.I by diverse cultural patterns.Her parents fled China
hope I don't get recognized much."That shouldn't be a just before the Communist takeover in 1949,eventually
problem.With no agent or publicity machine,she's hard settling in Athens,where both became professors at Ohio
• to find.(The backers of the Civil Rights Memorial called University.Her mother wrote poetry and taught litera-
all the Lins in the New York telephone book to find her; Lure;her father,a noted potter,became the dean of fine
the number is now unlisted.)She won't talk about her arts.Older brother Tan now teaches English at the Uni-
, personal life—although her relationship with her boy- versity of Virginia and just published his first book of
friend seems solid—and continues to live in a run-down poetry.In this environment,Lin spent much of her free
building in Chinatown. time alone,hiking in the woods,bird-watching,reading,
Indeed,if she wanted to,Lin could easily become a and making pottery in her father's studio.
highly paid celebrity designer with a bevy of staffers. Following her parents'training,Lin often looks at her
Instead,she works with one assistant in a fifth-floor work through the eyes of a teacher."If you tell the truth,
walk-up loft that is also her apartment.She takes on only people will react to it,"she says.No surprise,then,that
projects that fire her imagination,and professes not to her Vietnam and Civil Rights memorials use names and
care about a legacy.Even with those requirements,Lin timelines as teaching tools."I want a little kid to go to the
'. has enough work on her platter to last for two years. place and question what this history was about,under-
Lin was a student at Yale when she designed the Viet- stand a little bit more,maybe read more.I'm not trying
to dictate what people think;I'm just trying to present
some facts and allow you to think."
Lin's favorite spot at the wall:"I go to the top of the wall,right at the apex,where the grass is.Lie down Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was
there and you can sight perfectly to the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument,because that's how we did a radical notion for the National Mall,one of the world's
it.If you put your eye right to the wall on top,you can see the Washington reflected in half and the Lincoln reflected most famous landscapes:a wall cut into the earth,etched
in the other half.I just love it from up there;it's really about connecting[the Vietnam memorial]to history.I usually with the names of more than 58,000 dead soldiers.It
go up there and the park service people don't know who I am.They're going to shoo me off,then they sort of notice, ignited a firestorm of opposition when it was announced
'Oh—we know her.'Then they let me do it.I don't do that very often,but it's how I sighted the piece.So that's in 1981.
very special."(The spot is not open to the public.) "It wasn't a statue of a guy on a horse,so people
4 USA WEEKEND•Nov.1-3.1996 COVER PHOTOGRAPHS(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)BY ROGER FOLEY.FOLIO:
TIM THAYER.JOE STEWARDSON:DARRYL ESTRINE FOR LSA WEEKEND
J
ication of the memorial in 1982 that Lin's name was and,say those who visit,a kind of healing.Survivors
not mentioned. leave mementos at the wall;veterans maintain a
_ "My only regret,"she says now,"is staying so naive round-the-clock vigil.Tour buses,many of them filled
about the politics of the Vietnam War that I didn't with schoolchildren,regularly stop.
" ' really realize that we were sending into war 18-year- "All I can think about,"Lin says,"is about one per-
, ,,,i,
t olds and that when they came back,people spat on son experiencing the work."
.''° them.Do you know what that does to you? Of the wall,she says,"I designed
s "All I could think at the time was:[All this anger] a hundred years from now will still be ableto go to that
is not about the art.This is about the country coming piece and have a sober understanding about a high
to terms with something.I happily blanked out from price of the war.
i ; what went on until I saw the movie." "I was there one day—I don't go there that often
ii Ft$ She's referring to Freida Lee Mock's Academy —and a noisy,noisy group of schoolchildren gets off
m as Award-winning 1995 documentary, a bus,goes in.Teacher says nothing.
Maya Lin:A Strong Clear Vision,which On the wall They hit the beginning.Silence.No one
PBS will air Nov.27 as part of its P.O.V. said anything. No adults said anything;
controversy:
series.It appears to have had a cathartic r they just knew.
effect on Lin.She coped with the painful 'I had a lot of "I felt so good right then.I just sort of
experiences of 1981-82 by returning to anger for years, smiled."
{ Yale as a graduate student and trying
] 1' * to ignore the whole episode. and I don't erhaps to avoid being typecast as a
"The only way I could get over it was think I realized memorial-maker—for a time,she
t to deny it,but in denying it,people really says,every disaster was followed by
- never understood what it cost me.And it.If anyone an invitation to create a monument to it
it cost me a lot.I had a lot of anger for tried to ask —Lin broadened her palate.Her recent
years,and l don't think I really realized me about it,I public works include TOPO, a playful
- it.If anyone tried to ask me about it,I1,600-foot-long landscaped approach to
€ would go away." would go away.' the Charlotte(N.C.)Coliseum(1991);
When Lin discovered that Mock Groundswell,Zen-like"glass gardens"
planned to include some of the most emotionally located in light wells and roofs of the Wexner Center
move,in her charged anti-memorial scenes in her documentary,"I for the Arts in Columbus,Ohio(1993);and Wave
lot studio in was very upset.I was like,`Let's not show this film. Field,an undulating quadrangle of thick grass planted
New souk.Let, Let's put it away.'Again,it was my automatic desire on wavy mounds in front of the University of Michi-
Eclipsed Time to just not deal with it."But Lin resisted that urge,and gan aerodynamics complex(1995).
(1993),her in some way the documentary seems to have freed her Wave Field(pictured on the cover)illustrates Lin's
ce1Mn&nnunted to talk about the ordeal,and allowed her to make methods.Her works are always different,she says,
clock at the peace with her own Vietnam demons. "but there's always a similar process.I do a lot of
a cites
alorr Penn
uses "She suffered a lot,"says Vincent Scully,a legen- research...usually two or three months of just read-
''" an eclipse dary Yale art history professor who taught Lin.The ing here and there."Because the Michigan complex
4
motion to mark day she stood up and defended her design in front of was devoted to flight,she met with scientists,got
-the hours. an angry crowd of veterans,he recalls,she gained books on flight,and finally came across"these incred-
inspiration by wearing a hat similar to ones Frank ible images of turbulence and wave patterns"in a
couldn't understand it,"says Jan Scruggs,the Vietnam Lloyd Wright,the great American architect,used to book on fluid motion."To fly,we have to have resis-
veteran who spearheaded the effort to get the wall favor.Later,a cartoon of her wearing the hat referred tance.It's all about turbulence.I hit this one wave pat-
built."People started reading all kinds of hidden to her as"Mama San." tern,which I just knew was it."
meaning into it." Now,though,the controversy has subsided,except Though Lin has never gotten an architect's license.
In fact,her goal was simple and straightforward. for an occasional effort to plant a flag at the apex or she has begun to do more work in the area for which
"The memorial goes back to a very simple notion of otherwise turn the wall into a more traditional memo- she was formally trained.She designed the interior
understanding,really,that we have to accept death as rial.The wall evokes silence,contemplation,regret spaces for New York's Museum for African Art,and
part of our life,"Lin says."We can't just hide it away. has designed several houses.
That's something American culture tties to do. After completing the Civil Rights Memorial in
"With most public art,the lettering is enormous.A Statue limitations? 1989,Lin said she had retired from designing memo-
crowd can read it en masse.Well,what if you throw This sculpture by Glenna I) rials.But today that attitude may have softened."My
a book out into the public domain and ask people Goodacre commemorating ,. 'I pet dream is the environmental issue,"she says."I like
to read it?What's a book about?It's about intimacy, the role of Vietnam War _ t;. I to do things in trilogies.I would love to explore one
privacy and this one-on-one connection.So to switch nurses was added t0 the , s :." ' last memorial.This one might deal with extinction.It
that,and make a monument feel more intimate,like memorial site in 1993. — 4$ will deal with the environment."
a book,is automatically going to ask for a quieter, Lin describes the decision _ - NI 4 In the meantime,she is working on a sculpture for
more personal,individual response." to add the statue as the Cleveland Public Library,designing a recycling
Thus,the lettering on the Vietnam wall is small. "misguided in its attempt -_ a plant in the South Bronx section of New York City,
You need to get close to read it.Or touch it. ...t0 cover all grounds. OW— `' and is in the final drawing stage on a house in Con-
"I truly believed that it would help people,and once It's sad that[critics of the r necticut."I'm very lucky.I get to do whatever my
it was up,they would understand." wall]felt that was what imagination wants me to do,and people want to sup-
Eventually Lin and her design prevailed.The they needed.It's very port that.I'm just following my muse." CZI
memorial was built very close to its original design, badly thought Out."
with the addition of a statue of three soldiers near the s Jim Sexton last wrote for USA WEEKEND about David Kessler,head
entrance.Yet feelings remained so charged at the ded- - - �.-1 of the U.S.Food and Drug Administration.
USA WEEKEND•Nov.1-3,1996 5
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