Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision

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You Designing the piece, I knew that I had to ask myself what, you know, what is a memorial's purpose, especially what is a memorial's purpose in the 20th century?

And all I was saying in this piece is the cost of war is these individuals and we have to remember them first. And so it's really the people, not the politics, which is what this piece is about. Because it's only when you accept the pain, it's only when you accept the death, can you then come away from it, can you then overcome it? And literally as you read a name or touch a name, in the pain will come out and I really did mean for people to cry, that you can then have to, if your own power, turn around and walk back up into the light, into the present. But if you can't accept death, you'll never get over it. So what the memorial is about is about honesty, which is also what the civil rights piece is about. You have to accept and admit that this pain has occurred in order for it to be healed, in order for it to be cathartic.

So many guys in the same day. Look, if you see the paper, you'll find one name. No, some of them are special people, some of them are special people, others are special to other people. This is a portrait of Maya Lynn, designer, architect and sculptor that looks at a decade of her work and its impact.

It is a story about artistic vision and creativity and a journey into our country's history, beginning with her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. There's nothing really like it, there isn't anything really like it at all. It doesn't make any specific gesture, which can date it in time or in place. It's all wars, all death, all living and all dead. At once, it's a remarkable thing and done by a girl of 20 or whatever, it's really unbelievable. It's really hard to grasp.

At yeah, I got together with maybe five other students and we decided to set up our own course that would specifically deal with a funerary architecture. More importantly, how does Mandio with death through the built form? So the whole semester dealt with a number of studio projects. One of us, I can't remember who found a poster that advertised a competition for Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And we said, what a great idea, what's use that and make that our final project for this course. In 1979, I had seen a movie called The Deer Hunter. I decided after that movie, kind of in the middle of the night, that this memorial had to be built. It was obvious that the United States government was not going to build it. And I felt the memorial would only be built if I were to do it. And this was my destiny. We set up the corporation and we found that it required an act of Congress in order to build a memorial on the mall.

And on July 1st, 1980, President Carter signed the legislation. The question, of course, then was what would the memorial look like and how would we obtain a design? I just didn't really care what it looked like. But when I thought of what it would look like, I really thought of something like an obelisk, a large obelisk with the names on the side and so forth. I mean, when you think about that, it's not a particularly realistic way to display names because an obelisk rises high and the names at the top, you would never be able to see. One or two people said, well, let's design it ourselves. And I mean, I think we all knew that would be complete disaster. And then other people said, well, let's find the best architect in the country and have him or her design it. And, you know, that beg the question of who, indeed, is the best architect in the country or best architecture firm and how can you find those people?

We went to visit the site. And I guess I just imagined taking a knife, cutting open the earth, opening it up, pointing one end to the Lincoln, one end to the Washington and having names be chronological. Someone had sent off for the preliminary booklet and it came back and the booklet said, you know, words, the names of the 57,000 dead must be on the memorial. And I said, perfect. And that's what the memorial would be, names upon the black surface of the earth, the earth polished. The sketches that I made for the original presentation of the piece were some very soft pastel sketches. I think I was nicknamed the Monet of the Architecture School as an undergraduate. When you designed for a course, you're really designing for you. And then I just bothered to submit it.

Well, she was a student of mine in class, in the theories of architecture class. And there, I guess, is where we had our most important connection because after she had designed her memorial, she had to write an essay to go with it. And she'd been having trouble writing it. At least this is what she told me. And one of the classes I talked about, Luchin's great memorial to the dead of the sum at Jephal near Albert in France, North of Amiens. And she said that as soon as she saw those slides, she picked up her pen and began to write. All this, I knew I couldn't just describe in a drawing. It had to be this written essay. And that essay took like two months to write, because I knew I had to get it right, because the design itself would work too simple to the naked eye. I waited till the 11th hour, and I had to get the boards in by express mail, and I had no more time, and I figured I had to write it. So I had wrote it. In fact, I think there was actually a scratch done, something else was blotted in, and then sent it off to the competition.

Knowing full well, it wouldn't be chosen, because it wasn't a politically glorified statement about war, that it focused only on the individual and the losses, on the sacrifices. The memorial is composed not as an unchanging monument, but as a moving composition, to be understood as we move into and out of it. The passage itself is gradual, the descent to the origin slow, but it is at the origin that the meaning of this memorials to be fully understood. At the intersection of these walls, on the right side, at the wall's top, is carved the date of the first death. It is followed by the names of those who have died in the war in chronological order. It is up to each individual to resolve or come to terms with this loss, for death is in the end a personal and private matter.

And the area contained within this memorial is a quiet place meant for personal reflection and private reckoning. We were persuaded by some very competent people that it would be a mistake for the veterans to select their own memorial, indeed that we needed an impartial group of professionals, design professionals, who could really rise above the fray, and select a memorial for us. Another problem was how do you select a random group of Vietnam veterans? Because the veterans of Vietnam are as diverse a group as any other randomly selected group in our society. There were many different eras in the Vietnam War, many different years that the war raged, and each year was different for the soldiers who served there.

If you were there in 1965, this was the year when the people who were serving in Vietnam joined because John F. Kennedy inspired them by saying ask not what your country can do, ask what you can do for your country. By the time I got there in 1969, all of that type of patriotic fervor had gone. This was a war being fought by draftees. The morale was bad, it was obvious we were not going to win. Nobody really wanted to be the last person killed over there. It was just, he came a very sad thing. People felt that we ourselves should constitute the jury. However, I knew I didn't know anything about art and design, and I knew that people around me knew less. That wasn't taken very seriously by anyone. Then there was the idea to have what I would call the affirmative action jury. For example, three Vietnam veterans, two gold star mothers, one anti-war protest or something like that. The problem with that, of course, is that, again, what do these people know about design?

We, after much dissension, agreed to go along with the idea of a blue ribbon panel, and we decided there would be two architects, two landscape architects, two sculptors, and one humanist. They said, we trust you. We are taking a hell of a risk with you people, but nonetheless we trust you. We tried to respond to that trust as responsible as we could. We confronted the submissions very carefully. We looked at each one of the 1441 entries, and there was a 40-foot rocking chair. There was a two-story combat boot. There was an American flag that covered two acres. Some of them, all they took was one look. We got to the 400 in the first day.

Once we got down to about 200, we formed a little posse, all the jury, and went as a group in front of each contestant's entry. At first viewing, I did not pick it out to be a winner. Several of the other members of the jury did. I was wrong. The longer we looked at it, the deeper we saw into it, and the more profound that statement was. The longer I looked, the more convinced I was that it was unquestionably the one. It was totally a surprise. I had not imagined that we would have anything of, I could say, that starkness, that simplicity, and I don't think any of us really knew what to say until Jack Wheeler was holding to stick his neck out. He said, I think it's a work of genius. We all joined in applauding the jury's decision.

The first thing I thought of was it looked like a bat. I imagined the boomerang. I said, you know what? People are going to criticize this by saying this is a boomerang, and making analogy to Vietnam is trying to throw away a boomerang, and the boomerang will always come back. This is going to be called a black hole in the ground. This is going to be a problem. This is a very unconventional memorial. The jurors, people like Hideo Sasaki, Mr. Harry Hunt, and others, convinced me and everyone in the room because it was up to us to accept it or not accept it, that this was not just an average work of art, that this was really going to be a world-class work of art, something that could stand up next to the finest piece of architecture in Rome, or Tokyo, or London,

that this was just not an average memorial. I walked out of there believing in this design, knowing that it was going to be a public relations problem, but was totally willing to fight for it. We opened little envelope on the back of the design and pulled out the cards. It indicated an address in New Haven. Jack Wheeler had spent time at Yale University, and he said that looks like student housing. So this person, who we thought was a woman, is obviously a student, and we sent, because we expected her, we had no idea how mature she was, we sent, we overreacted and said a delegation of three people up to New Haven. My roommate came and got me, and only said, don't get your hopes up, but you've got a call from Washington. So, I went running back to my room, waited for them to call back, and all they said was, don't get your hopes up.

We want to talk to you about your design, and they told me, and I didn't quite understand. So they told me again, and I'm still not quite understanding. Did your parents know this before? Yeah, they're here in the audience, they're right back there, and my brothers here, and my roommate. I'm going to point out, you know, really the finest architects in the country, and also some of the highest priced architecture firms in the country, did enter this competition, and they all lost. When I was selected, I definitely knew I was in for a struggle, and I was in for a very, a time that I knew I wouldn't understand, and it would be, I mean, it took me years and years to like really figure out how difficult that time period was, and it was a pretty pressured time, and there was no way anyone could teach you how to get through this.

When I came home from Vietnam in December of 1968, I was literally spat upon in the Chicago airport as I walked through my uniform. That spit hurt. It went through me like a spear. Welcome home. Now, when I saw the designs of the show at Andrews Air Force Base, indeed, I was impressed by the level of thought and effort that had gone into them. But when I saw the winning design, I was truly stunned. I thought that the most insulting and demeaning memorial to our Vietnam experience that was possible. I don't care about artistic perceptions. I don't care about the rationalizations that abound. One needs no artistic education to see this memorial design for what it is, a black scar. Black, the universal color of sorrow and shame and degradation in all races and all societies worldwide. In a hole, hidden as if out of shame, so that no Vietnam veteran who must spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair can never visit it.

As a Vietnam veteran who feels dishonored by the design that was declared the winner of the VVMF competition, I call in the United States Fine Arts Commission to reopen the selection process of the design competition and to require that the winning design be chosen by a jury composed exclusively of Vietnam veterans. Are we Vietnam veterans so blind? Are we so dumb? Will we be outhustled again? Are we going to take this? It took me months to realize, obviously, a lot of people are going to be extremely offended that the creator of the American Vietnam veterans is not only not a veteran, but she is a she, she is an Asian. And I did ask the veterans group I was working with, did mail come in, did criticism come in, and sure, I mean there was obviously letters saying, how can you let a gook design the memorial?

I was actually very surprised that the one design issue that they really had problems with was the chronological listing, which to me was the heart of the design. The only way I could tell them is get a listing of all the Smiths that were listed and say, do you really think someone wants to come and find his son in a sea of 500 other names? It's just going to be impossible that listing them chronologically was a much more realistic and easier way. I knew it would take time for you to look up a name, research where it is, and then go find it, and my only argument was that if you really loved someone, you're going to spend the extra three minutes, in fact there's three minutes of looking up that name and walking to and finding it, is going to become so much a part of the preciousness of knowing that person. There was a group that formed here in Washington of veterans who were particularly disgruntled

and saw in the design a negative political statement. And they began a campaign to discredit the design in the eyes of Secretary Antire Watt, and this became very dirty. In November, they circulated a document alleging that one of the jurors in the competition was a communist, and that four had been active anti-war protesters. We tried to keep this communist allegation out of the press, but there had to be somebody low and mean enough to publicize it, and that turns out that that was Pat Buchanan. Congressman from Illinois named Henry Hyde, who happened to represent the neighborhood where I grew up, read it, claimed that he had never heard of the memorial before, and wrote a letter to all the Republicans in the Congress, and asked them to write to President Reagan and have him tell Secretary Watt to block the design. Their idea was to take the design and change the color to white,

put it, quote, above ground, and plant a flagpole at the vertex of the walls. And they were saying that, you know, we could do this by ourselves without changing the original concept, and they actually worked up the sketch of this white fence with a flagpole pointed at the vertex that they were waving around and wanted us to do. General Michael Davison would actually command of the Cambodian invasion and supported the myelin design stood up, and so why couldn't we keep the design as it is and add a statue to the site? And that seemed to be the key. In the first week in January, Secretary Watt sent us a letter saying that he was going to review the design personally again, and by the end of January, he had given us an ultimatum that unless we compromise with the group of detractors, that he would indeed kill the project. Unless they approve of those three changes, there will be no Vietnam memorial here in Washington DC.

Secretary Watt's letter put us in a very difficult position because he was in a position to abort this design, and I wasn't at all sure if this one was scuttled what would come in its place. I felt that one had to be pragmatic because if one loud oneself simply to be martyred on this issue, then we'd have no Vietnam memorial or we'd have some piece of schlock. The people who were trying to stop the memorial from being built, these are very mean, spirited people. Some were very evil people, in my opinion. They were looking for anything they could do to stop construction of the memorial. The American Legion and many veterans groups like that, who were very conservative, never fought us with the design.

The only people who fought us with the design was a small group, a very well-connected people politically, who also had considerable expertise in basically lobbying and public relations. Why, Ms. Len, do you think there has been so much frustration, so much bitterness, so much acrimony? I think, in a sense, it's a part of the Vietnam controversy that's carried on, and you could probably take almost any design submitted, and it would evoke the same emotions, as I think Mr. Scruggs was pointing out earlier, his choice to build a memorial at this time comes soon enough so that the anger and the frustration carried over, and I think that is playing into this memorial. Is it possible that the three of you symbolically can bury the hatchet as far as your concern? I would hope so. The interest in this subject had mounted so that we had to move into the cash room of the department of treasuring

in order to accommodate the media and the public that all wanted to get in on this act, and both sides of the issue of whether or not a flag and a sculpture should be added to the design, and if so, where? Meeting will come to order. We are reconvening the stated meeting of the Commission of Fine Arts. We have completed our agenda now, except for one outstanding item, a consideration of some new proposals for additions to the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, I speak as an individual, a member from the general public. What are the memorable images from the war in Vietnam? A gorilla shot at point blank range, a naked girl, a fire, running, screaming down a dusty road.

I think Maya Lynn was right in going beyond these kinds of images. She resolved all the pain and conflict of that unhappy time in a simple message of sacrifice and quiet heroism. Although I still don't like that wall, but the compromise means I'll hold my peace, will accept a statue, and this, the flag, the statue is a one appraisal of the way we were. I am moved by it. Mr. Chairman. I'm Jim Broadneck, and a local coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. All veterans groups approve of the additional elements. The design is such that I can go in and I can remember. And that's the only thing that has to be done.

The architect designer who won the original competition. Thank you, Chairman, commissioners. The original design gives each individual the freedom to reflect upon the heroism and sacrifice of those who served. It is not a memorial to politics or war or controversy, but to all those men and women who served. It weaves the individual with the freedom of reflection and contemplation at a place where he is at once part of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and a part of our memorialized history. These intrusions which treat the original work of art is no more than an architectural backdrop reflecting insensitivity to the original design subtle spatial eloquence. And the statues, merely eight feet tall, are taller than most of the wall for most of its length. These intrusions rip apart the meeting of names, destroying the meaning of the design.

I am not approving or disapproving of the sculpture per se. I disapprove of the forced melding of these two different memorials into one memorial. Thank you. Thank you very much. We understand, I think, the degree to which there is a felt need in this country for healing. And we want to be part of that process. We want to help. We want to help heal the wounds. And we certainly want to help honor and recognize all those who served in Vietnam. When we deliberate about anything on that felt, a flag certainly could be incorporated. We felt that if we were going to do it, it should be done as an entrance experience. And to have the sculptures in this relationship with the wall. That was the breakthrough we had found a solution that seemed to maintain the integrity of the original design and still satisfy those who felt that these other elements were indispensable.

You see it as two separate memorials. You were fighting against standards, you were fighting against traditional viewpoints. And I think that's what art does to a certain degree. It's always pushing the envelope. You're pushing it past its known definition and you're going to get a lot of people who are going to fight it. I mean, I think that's one of the prices you pay. Thank you. Time to give it a go. Thank you. Time to go.

Time to go. Time to go. Time to go. Time to go. Time to go. BEATS PLAYING To me, a hero is somebody who is unselfish, you know, who does not have the big ego, who

is not a mean-spirited type of person, but of course, who will fight, and many times becomes a hero because he or she was willing to fight. Maya epitomizes everything, I think, that's good about our country. She won this competition very, very fairly and very honestly, but she was treated very poorly. Some of the opponents made some innuendos about her nationality of being Asian, that was a very ugly thing, and I'm very sorry she had to put up with that. I really was interested in continuing my education.

I knew I had to go through architecture, grad school, and I just wanted to sort of complete that, and then we'll see what I start to design. In 1987, Ms. Lynn received an honorary doctorate of Fine Arts degree from Yale University. Gary Crudeau and Ms. Lynn are the two youngest to receive such degrees in the history of Yale University. Today, Dr. Lynn will speak to us on the topic Reflection on Art Within Society. Please welcome Dr. Lynn. Thank you, President Neff, members of Juniata College. My work originates from a simple desire to make people aware of their surroundings.

And this can include not just the physical, but the psychological world that we live in. This desire has at times led me to become involved in artworks that are as much politically motivated as they are aesthetically based, creating works which focus on some sobering realities of our age, that an artist fights to retain the integrity of a work so that it remains a strong, clear vision. Art is and should be the act of an individual. We're going to say something new, something not quite familiar. It is that collection of those singular, personal visions transformed from within the mind's eye to the public, which is throughout time, throughout our history, come to form a definition of who we are and in a way why we are. It is a dialogue with not only our peers, but with people and times both before and beyond our time. For although each of us can be defined by the brief physical time that we as individuals

exist, we have the ability to make that time extend far beyond our physical existence. We are part of a collective consciousness connected to one another through time by our works, images, thoughts and writings. We communicate to future generations what we are, what we have been, hopefully influencing for the better, what we will become. Thank you. The local Vietnam veterans wanted to have an opportunity to express their appreciation to Dr. Linh. Thank you, Dr. Nath. Good morning, everyone. We represent post-23 veterans of Vietnam more of my Indian. I am Wilber Smith to my left Arnold McClure, Sonny Lane and Clyde Cipes. Maya, on behalf of Vietnam veterans everywhere, we would like to thank you for your efforts

in designing our Vietnam Memorial. No other design could be so fitting a tribute to our fallen comrades. Numbers are just numbers, but when we can look at the wall and see the names chiseled in stone, that's a constant reminder of the high price of freedom. The numbers of our friends and brothers will live forever through your beautiful piece of work. We thank you, and thank God, richly bless you. Thank you very much. And when the grass comes in, you'll barely notice the stone, but only when you're really sitting in there, so the thing sort of disappears from sight until you're actually in it.

The sculpture of which you're sitting at the large circle is the two-part piece situated at the ridge, which is with whom those woods at the top, is a small circle. As this one is 40 feet in diameter, it is four feet, solid granite, placed flushed with the earth. The moss recovered ridge, so in time the moss will begin to grow over the stone. That's what this place is. It's a very simple design. It's rough cut granite. We just chose field blocks. I didn't really want a manicured look. The earth will always stay grassy on the outside, fairly rough, but when it enters the ring, this will get dished out a little bit more, but it will be a perfect grassy, almost a concave, sort of contact lens shape, so you've got the natural order and then the boundary, and then you deal with sort of a quietly implied order of man. I'm very anxious right now.

I'm anxious because we're on a time done like, I'm anxious in that, and I've gone through that first hesitation of what have I made, where you've made it, you've made models of it, you've studied as best you could, then you yep, so you give it to someone, they fabricate it, and there's that blankness waiting for the piece to come back, and hopefully it's as you expected it to be. I would have loved to see the thing turn right side up, because it's such an abnormally large circle, so that when you walk right up to it, the bottom disappears.

All you see is this flat circular point, which will float the nids, and I would have loved to see that here, but can't have everything. When Morris D's approached me to design a memorial to civil rights, I knew that I really wanted to come down at least with a definition for me of what that would be, in a verbal way, before I found a form for it, and I think that's very important that I want to understand conceptually what the piece is about or what its nature should be before I actually go visit the site, because once I see the site, I tend to start designing. After three months of research and reading, there was an essence, there was a spirit of that movement, and if I could just strip it there and get that spirit, and as I'm going down on the point to meet the Southern Poverty Law Center group, I come across Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech, and I get to the line and we shall not be satisfied

until justice flows like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream, and I knew right then the piece would be about water, that it would be the use of water that would tie the elements together, I knew there would be two elements, a specific retelling of the history, and then this quote. I didn't know much about the civil rights era, and that's what really scared me. All the events took place as I was growing up, it was not brought to my attention in school, it was barely dealt with. What was very important in the civil rights memorial, it wasn't just going to be something that memorialized individuals that we could name, as important was the entire historical event, at which point you begin to memorialize history.

My choice of a timeline, a table of events that intertwined people's deaths with political and legislative acts that either happened because someone died, or because of better legislation, riots and soothed, where people died, so you really begin to see a cause and effect and how people actually helped to change history. Felt and go get one of Rogan's drawings of the water table and hide looks at the bottom and if you got one, it's more of an optical illusion right now that you've seen all these boats and everything else.

I think we all felt we were part of a very special team, and once you begin to be a very sort of team-spirited group, then things work magically for you. I mean he would tease me because I kept specifying this perfect concrete or this perfect that, and it was a joke that went around, but I knew I could really trust them because I could just tell that they were really caring about this project. Yeah, we won't bump it down as low as we can get it and still keep it coming over. You really have, again what it is, you're getting two lines that come down to one exit point and that's where you've got too much volume water, so all these are just like single that

come down and flow through a bigger surface, so when you get to these little points. Okay, so what do you do about it? We have to fill it with an epoxy and a prime marine base that's not going to yellow over time. The use of water was a very critical element. What we were doing was almost making water turn the table and literally flow under so that you could touch and change the path of the water as you read this history. Just like logically I wanted people to be able to feel like they really were a part of making this piece come alive. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Julian Bond.

It is my great pleasure to introduce the treasurer of the state of Alabama, the Honorable George Wallace Jr. Thank you very much, Julian. Those family members of Slane Civil Rights Workers, please know that my heart is with you at this time, knowing the flood of emotions you feel tonight, remembering your loved ones, please understand their countless thousands of Alabamians and Americans with you in mind and spirit. In my own family there has been much suffering, and out of his suffering I have seen my own father grow much more compassionate, more understanding, and become a deeper religious person. I welcome you to Alabama this weekend for an occasion of profound remembrances, and I hope this will be a positive time for you, something overwhelming in the beauty and power of a simple piece of sculpture, something which will stand forever to the lasting memory of your loved ones.

Thank you very much. First I want to go on record from the church as your pastor to thank a young, progressive, white liberal lawyer in Montgomery, Alabama, who didn't just start being liberal yesterday,

but turned him Rs. D. Civil Rights attorney who has represented many of these feminists who have descended the born Montgomery, Alabama. I was just going to say what motivates you, a white southern male, to the voter place for this? Well, my father had a very small farm, in fact he didn't own any land enough to boy. The people that we worked with, and I learned to love and care about, a lot of the right people, and they were just as poor as we were. This is my home, I love this area. The Confederate flag is flying on top of that capital today, there's just as much of my part of my heritage as Dr. King's march down Decks Avenue. And just because of that, I'm not blind to the past by that, and I'm not blind to the future. I mean, I want to move forward. This is their time, this is their place. I should have done my part what I can try to do, and now I leave it to them.

Okay? We shall overcome someday, oh, freedom, oh, freedom, oh, freedom, oh, freedom, oh, the me. Please welcome Mrs. Rosa Parks. For the blackness of a hundred midnight surrounded my days, and when my eyes were a fountain of tears, the realization came that Emmett's death was not a personal experience for me

to hug to myself and weep, but it was a world wide awakening that would change the course of history. The mother of Andrew Goodman, Dr. Carolyn Goodman. And Andy's body was found, his father, now dead, said, our grief, though personal belongs to our nation. This tragedy is not private. It is part of the public consciousness of our country, and this extraordinary monument has etched these losses in stone and will be a lasting reminder of courage and commitment to generations yet unborn. And so we gather today in the cradle of the Confederacy, to dedicate a monument to those who died so all might be free. Once this cradle rocked with the violence of our opponents, today it is soothed by the

waters of this monument, a monument which, like the movement it honors, is majestic in its simplicity and overwhelming in its power. What really was amazing to me is the notion of a circle which heals, which has no break in it, which is something I really love working with, and this magical link as more families would gather around this fairly immense diameter table, the circle would close, and even though you had more people, as the circle began to close, the more intimate the piece became until the whole circle had been filled by a ring of hands, by a ring of people, and

in a way they were symbolically sort of together linked by this history they were reading quietly. And that really was special to me. I feel like between the Vietnam and the civil rights, I've finished a decade in America's histories. Those events really did quietly and internally influence who I am. You ask, how was it growing up in Athens or how? In a way I was very strange, I mean we were the only sort of non-whites within the community and there wasn't any prejudice, but I think my parents being foreigners felt slightly isolated, and as a result we kind of grew up as a four person family, my parents were both on the faculty at our youth.

My mother is a professor of English, so I grew up pretty much a faculty brat. My dad and mother were both from China and immigrated in the mid to late 40s. My father studied ceramics, ended up with dean of fine arts at our youth, so I literally had the whole art school to play in as a little kid. I think I get a lot from my parents, and I think they had a very critical eye, and that's sort of how we grew up. I went to the public school in Athens or higher, really enjoyed school. I was one of those disgusting little kids that loved school, I just really liked to study. I just was one of the kids that really would come home, do my homework, watching TV. I think the strongest part, as far as what I am about, is really an underlying aesthetic or a clean aesthetic that was just sort of a part of our household.

I think my father and my mother ideal parents, I consider myself very lucky. I mean, my brother, who is a poet now, and I guess I'm sort of between an architect and a artist, I think there was an unspoken push to do something. Don't just go out there and make money. I mean, it's a funny thing. It's like you think of the stereotypes I would go out there and be successful, but it wasn't just go out and make money, just, in fact, that would be considered wrong. You should go out there and do something you feel is very important. One of it means that you might not financially survive. I mean, it's really just to be, maybe in a way, what was there was a respect for just being creative, because you learn from examples. I think more than what parents might say to do or might tell you what to do, its children will follow, you love your parents, or if you respect them, follow the examples they

read. I grew up surrounded by woods and really loved that landscape and loved the privacy. The whole backyard was one large hill, or actually made up of a series of hills. You could really sense the earth being pushed into these separate spines. I think one, in particular, is a kid we love to play on. We always sort of had nickname, the wizard's back. For all of the jokes about everyone loves to hate New York, it's an amazing city in which to work. It's a city that doesn't sleep all my other art friends are here, so there's a great winking of different ideas. There's something there that also feeds the energy to work at a very sort of fast pace. The reason I chose to study architecture was because my interests in art were also coupled

with a very strong interest in mathematics and science, and I felt architecture was a strong combination. It's one of the fields where women have had a very hard time breaking into. It's a tough profession, women are just beginning to emerge, and hopefully in the 21st century you'll begin to see more women in the field. There are very different ways in which women and men are raised socially, and will that alter the aesthetic eye, from a male eye to a female eye, and I don't get caught up in it, but I'm sure there are differences, and we can only wait and see. When I design the actual image, it's sometimes very quick, it's a very intuitive gesture, and usually those intuitive gestures are the strongest ones, for me at least. I think the differences they'll say, there are people that lay eggs, and then there are people that sit there and polish and polish and polish.

To get the finished product, I have always literally just dropped the idea, weighed the eggs down to speak, and it's so true to its nature at that point that if I try to embellish it, I wait or take away what I've embellished, keeping to that clear idea. I think the artist and me is where the sculptor is creating something fresh, is creating something new, so the idea of mimicking history, if someone came to me and said, well I would like a Jeffersonian house, I would say, well you probably selected the wrong architect and send them onto someone they'd be happier with. I will say right off, I'm extremely sensitive to a site, that I really believe in a natural

beauty of how a house sits within the landscape, in a mixture of materials, textures, light. Again, very empathetic, simple human responses. One of the differences between architecture and sculpture, I've always equated it as the difference between writing a novel and writing a poem. I am not going to say if one is harder than the other, I think they're both equally difficult, but what counts in a poem is that initial idea, the gesture, it has to be perfect all the way through, and in a novel it's the grand idea that has to come through, and I think architecture is the same way, the choosing of the doorknobs, the choosing of the materials, the choosing of every single detail of how to put it together. Those are all parts and fragments of that novel, but if I think you can get the idea, that

might tell how strong the house is. I was very happy when the webber house started to take shape, especially the roof, because the shape of the roof is, in a way, mimicking the landscape. The Center for African Art called, they wanted to open, or black history month, in February, the end of the year.

I think had I been seeing at that time I would have said, pick or choose, you can have the time with the money, but trying to have both constraints on time and money is an impossible situation. But I think all of a set of feeling of, well we'll give it a shot. Met, Met, though we had one crew of contractors in, Union Crew, the piece would not have been installed without getting other crews. I had my own crew of friends who are artists, opera singers, turned carpenters, who really worked to put a lot of the inside finishing cabinets in. The museum curators and their staff were installing the show, the final hours before the museum was dedicated. It felt more like stage set production. It was a lot of energy in those last weeks, where I think people would walk in, take one look, four days to go before opening, so they're never going to do it.

The place looked like a tornado had hit it. I see the museum as an educational journey that you take, and there's a bit of a magical myth going on, as you walk in the floors, the color of deep blue green, it's like water. What are these poles supposed to be? They're trees. They're all artificial copper trees. They all kind of still jiggle, right? They just work in progress right now. I think the museum for African art was politically loaded, symbolically loaded. When one culture adopts another culture's works, puts them in museums, when they are not

in museums in Africa, well, what does that mean? How does that change our perception? We got to the city of New York, I'm getting to the museum for African art, a heart felt welcome to its new home, Bay Road, and Prosper here. You have to go down that stair, I'm in the stair, no, no, no, no, I'm going to, I'm going down that stair. I make very few pieces, that's very private sculpture, it's wet, it's broken glass,

beeswax, and they're the private side of me. We can't be dropped, no sudden moves, no drops, no jarring, so you can't let them drop the box. This is a self portrait, it's my height, my weight, web and beeswax. The funny thing about this one is when it went into a gallery and I went into check it for

the first time I was so depressed, I was so short, I was very, very sad, you never understand what your scale really is. I was contacted by the head curator of the Wexmer Center, which is a center for the arts in Columbus, Ohio, asking me if I would be interested in being their first artist in residence who would install a permanent work of sculpture. I had an irresistible opportunity to do something I've been wanting to do for a long time, which is to create these landscapes of broken glass. It took me three months just to find

the right glass and to coordinate tons of glass being delivered and put into three different sides of which one was extremely high up and accessible only by crane. To get the right color mix, it was sort of a little bit like Goldilocks, this balls too hot, this balls too cold. There are two types of recyclable glass out there that I was able to reach. One was too white and light in color, one was too green and I just had to hand them especially mix it for me in their trucks to get this color that is much more of a sort of a light blue, it's almost like water. There's 43 tons of glass. We had to do a square footage analysis of each space I was putting glass into. There just was a deliberate choice not to plan what it would look like. I didn't do more than very preliminary sketches because I wanted them to take shape literally. I was going to sculpt them as I was on site with

the boom crane, the bucket and a group of people. The actual shape comes from a strong love of topography and landscape, mixing what it would be more like an eastern approach to the zen garden, the Japanese rock gardens of Kyoto with something that's distinctly from my south eastern Ohio heritage, which are the serpent mounds, the burial mounds of Yadina and Hopewell Indians that we built 3,000 years ago. I think it has an intimacy and a framed view into an imaginary landscape. The Yale Project was a very hard issue conceptually.

The idea of commemorating women at Yale, well what does that mean? I didn't have a clue at the beginning. I knew going through Yale, images throughout the buildings, benches dedicated to the students, everything was male. So you psychologically begin to realize is this a man's world you've entered into? I really did believe having a work out there you know made by a woman dedicated to women would be something that I really believed in. I sort of chose a form that is a table shape, a fountain. I really felt like giving Yale

a fountain piece. There's no place where students can come and gather. Yale is basically an urban campus and now they're making the area where the sculpture is going pedestrian. I had been fascinated with the idea of using a spiral. I think in both the Vietnam and civil rights they are essentially circular chronologies that have a beginning and an end. Both circles that sort of try to contain a time. With the idea at Yale you have a beginning but you don't have an end and I automatically thought of a spiral. A spiral that would definitely have a beginning but it's an ongoing. In 1969 there was a very strong quota put on the number of women that could apply and be at Yale. The idea was no woman would take

the place of a Yale man. So the quota system was something that very much burned every woman who went there. So numbers became something very important. I decided to do a spiral of numbers that would start not so much with the beginning of undergraduates in 1969 which is so short but it should go back and include all graduates and also before them when there were no women at Yale. So it's significant. He starts with zeros and I'm trying to take it back to 1701 or 1702 when Yale started. So as the water emerges there is a spiral of zeros. There should be about 170 zeros before you even get to single digits, double digits, triple and finally quadruple digits. So you actually see physically the spiral number getting wider and wider, signifying how the population of women at Yale has grown. I'm only a quarter shy of the mark of the air.

And I look at this table. I look at the numbers of all the women at Yale and I look at the women who have been here who have laid the wonderful foundation that has made us be able to experience the Yale the way it is today. I also think of the future women at Yale who

will grow to their full potential as they help Yale reach its full potential too. The one thing that has been a concern all my wife is the love for the environment and if I can do something that proves how man lives within his environment that's something that I would like to pose as a long term goal. Right now I'm one of the advisory members on the Presidio Council. We're involved with the conversion of Golden Gate National Park and San Francisco from a military base being turned over to the National Park Service. One of the things that attracted me to being on this council from the very beginning is I really see the Presidio quite frankly as a stepping stone into the 21st century

and it deals with part in Wandscape and it fundamentally could be used as an international magnet towards solving environmental issues. I think I posed the idea as being a great opportunity to take the idea of defense from being something dealing with the military might, from dealing with machines, army, guns, into being the idea of defense defending the worldly women protecting the environment that defense in the 21st century should become something else that is the world gets closer and hopefully we get, we are beginning to get along with each other a little bit better that we should also focus our concerns on protection on defense so to speak of the planet. The design of this memorial has created more articles and more words in the press

than any other in our time in the past 10 years. It has been recognized internationally as the standard by which all memorials will be judged. For 10 years I have been hoping that one day the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would join us for a ceremony. Today my dream comes true. She was 21 years old an architecture student at Yale University at the time she entered what turned out to be the largest national competition ever held for a memorial she created a space, a space for the living and the dead to meet. It's a pleasure to have her with us, ladies and gentlemen, the designer of the Vietnam Veterans

Memorial, myelin. Thank you. I didn't really have a speech prepared. I'm not very good at these things at all. Oftentimes I just let the work speak for itself but I really wanted to come back here for the 10th year anniversary. It has meant a lot for me to have done something that can help so many. I feel I might be the author but I would like to remain fairly silent. The wall was designed for you, for everyone to come and bring their thoughts, their emotions to the wall. You make it come alive and I want to thank all of you for your service to this country. Thank you very much.

She wants to make, she wants to invent. She's like an absolutely pure cutting blade.

She's focused ruthlessly on her objective which is to make these touchingly, curiously generalized whole, complete forms. It's always been that with her. It's kind of a whole thing each time. Do you know what I mean? She's determined to get it and do it herself and nothing can stand up. Imagine the courage it took to stand up to all those people during the investigation and they're coming at her. She's 20 years old or so. You're able to stand up to that. The fiber. Maya, the word for Maya, is courage. It really is. Any fruttery.

Um.