Internationally renowned artist and architectural designer Maya Lin will present a lecture, "Projects," at 4 p.m. Friday, May 14, in Irvine Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
Lin has won numerous awards, and a documentary about her work - "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision" - won an Academy Award in 1996. She was born and raised in Athens, where her parents emigrated from China just before the Communist takeover in 1949. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in architecture from Yale University, where she was an undergraduate when her design proposal for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., was accepted.
Lin designed the artwork in the Ohio University's Bicentennial Park, which promises to be one of the most memorable and long-lasting achievements of the its bicentennial year. The 3.5-acre park at Richland Avenue and South Green Drive, in combination with Grover Center and Margaret M. Walter Hall, offers a stately entrance to campus.
Lin and her brother, Tan Lin, worked in tandem to create a "landscape of words" that reflects their shared memories of Athens and Ohio University. Their words and phrases are cast into the rectangles' retaining walls.
Among Lin’s other designs are the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., Groundswell at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus and an open-air peace chapel at Juniata College for former Ohio University first lady Elizabeth Baker.
The daughter of Professor Emerita of English Julia Lin and the late Henry Lin, dean emeritus of the College of Fine Arts, she studied computer programming at the University while in high school.
Ohio.edu Front Page Photo of Maya Lin by Walter Smith
