Interactive Artistry

During a time when most of her snot-nosed peers where draining a keg at a frat party, Maya Lin was busy designing national monuments. At the tender age of 21, while still an architecture student at Yale, Lin was making history for her design of the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in the nation’s capital. What did the precocious talent do for an encore? The Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. During the past two decades Lin has earned international acclaim for her minimalist and brainy sculptural and architectural works, which integrate the aesthetics of East and West in a way that encourages human interaction.

Her works invite people to experience their surroundings in a fresh light, often using natural materials such as stone, wood, and water to heighten awareness of the environment. One of her landscape sculptures -- Wave Fields, in front of the Federal Courthouse in Miami -- is a knockout example. Tonight at 8:00 p.m. Lin will be speaking at Florida International University as part of the Steven & Dorothea Green Critics’ Lecture Series at the Frost Art Museum. She will be discussing how her recent exhibit -- Systematic Landscapes, at the University of Washington -- was inspired by the way scientists and computers present visual information.
Fri., Feb. 16, 8 p.m.