She holds out a long rectangular black book that is a working prototype of the project. " 'Missing,' the last memorial, will focus attention on species and places that have gone extinct or will most likely disappear, within our lifetime," an opening page reads. Funding, she hopes, will come from environmentally concerned donors.
As Lin spoke, she crouched on the floor of the museum's Jacobs building, using a little hammer to delicately chisel a small, winding crack she spotted in the concrete floor. When the show opened last weekend, this accidental crack was transformed into a shimmering silver river running through her "Systematic Landscapes," an exhibit that brings indoors her environmental sculptures -- and the spiritual meditations that fuel them.
Dressed in jeans and a sleeveless brown T-shirt, her brown eyes direct and focused, she was unpretentious, friendly and open. But she spoke intensely of the existential forces driving her "last memorial."
"I digress from the art show," she half-apologized, gesturing to the monumental landscapes being meticulously assembled around her. "But for me it's all the same. I've always used nature and the environment as my inspiration."
She spends much of her time creating outdoor environmental sculptures, like a winding serpent mound in Sweden modeled on a famous ancient snake mound in Ohio.
But she has attained international recognition -- and at time, fierce opposition -- for spare, elegant monuments whose emotional punch uncoils as viewers follow the march of history. There are the names of the American dead at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was initially opposed by critics who wanted the work to personify fallen veterans with statues. At her Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., water flows over the names of murdered civil rights activists. The Yale Women's Table chronicles the days when female students audited as "silent listeners."
Shift to activism
Lin would like her new memorial to have global reach. She wants to use the Internet, interactive media and a book to tell people specific steps they can take to spare the environment, like avoiding plastic bags, insisting on shade-grown coffee or joining a program to "adopt" an endangered species and help protect it. She wants to unveil donated corporate billboards in locations such as Times Square, with 20-minute videos with images of endangered species and places.
