Silver Erie

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Silver Erie

Artist Maya Lin (American, b. 1959)

Date2012

Dimensions24 3/4 × 54 × 1/2 in. (62.9 × 137.2 × 1.3 cm)
Mount: 45 7/8 × 69 7/8 in. (116.5 × 177.5 cm)

MediumRecycled silver

ClassificationSculpture

Credit LineGift of Mr. & Mrs. William E. Levis, by exchange

Object number

2012.103

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 04

DescriptionSilver Erie is a relief sculpture in recycled silver, with a pearly rather than hyper-reflective sheen. It projects from the wall by barely more than a centimeter and is cast from a mold modeled precisely upon the contours of Lake Erie and the Maumee River.

Label Text[My] art works deal much more specifically with my personal love of landscape, the environment, how we see the land through a microscopic view, a satellite view of the Earth. That's my art. In an age of digital navigation apps such as Google Maps and Waze, we often take for granted our ability to see the features of the Earth from a height of miles and to map our environment with the swipe of a finger on a screen. For Silver Erie, Ohio native Maya Lin plotted the contours of Lake Erie and the Maumee River (the lake is about six miles from the Museum, the river about two miles away), then had them cast in reclaimed silver. By removing the lake and river from their geographical context, she turned them into a shimmering abstract shape that allows us to view nuances we are not able to see when viewing the bodies of water in reality. Lin has long been interested in the ways that art and the land can communicate with each other and inform our experience of both. A dedicated environmentalist, she has recently explored water—the essential element for life on Earth—in her art to address how humans impact the environment.