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 wa