Maya Lin

Maya Lin is famous for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. Lin was 21 years old when she attended Yale University in 1982 and created the Veterans Memorials Wall. Lin was studying to become an architect and as a project she decided to design the Veteran Memorial Wall. This is one of Lin's most memorable earth works involving architecture and many different designs to construct this wall.

The Veterans Memorial Wall is a V-shape wall made out of black stones. The Veterans Memorial Wall is in the shape of an open book ready to read the names of the 58,000 dead soldiers. The names of all the dead soldiers are inscribed in polish black granite. The wall itself was made from black granite from Bangalore, India.The walls also reflect the images of the trees, people visiting the walls and more.  In order to read the names of all the soldiers that died in the Vietnam war, people have to stand below the horizon which is around six feet under. The wall is 246 feet and nine inches long. The walls are sunk into the ground with the earth behind them. The color of the trees are green mix with some yellow. The walls look like they are surrounded around a circle of trees.

The other picture of the Veterans Memorial Wall taken from the satellite. The Veterans Memorial Walls are surrounded by the landscape of the earth. There is a total of 58, 267 written names in the wall. The names of all these soldiers are alphabetically in order, the size of the letters of the soldiers names are .53 inches and .015 inches in depth. All the names of the soldiers were written by a computerized typesetting process. This is a earth project that captured my attention by Lin because it combines nature with memory together into a piece of art.