Silver Erie
Artist: Maya Lin (American, b. 1959)
Date: 2012
Dimensions:
H: 24 3/4 in. (62.9 cm); W: 54 in. (137.2 cm); Depth: 1/2 in. (1.3 cm)
Medium: Recycled silver
Classification: Sculpture
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. & Mrs. William E. Levis, by exchange
Object number: 2012.103
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 Google Maps and GPS, 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 less than a mile away), then had them cast in reclaimed silver. By removing the lake and river from their geographical context, she turned them into a shining abstract shape that allows us to view nuances we couldn’t 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 as a way to address how humans impact the environment.
In an age of Google Maps and GPS, 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 less than a mile away), then had them cast in reclaimed silver. By removing the lake and river from their geographical context, she turned them into a shining abstract shape that allows us to view nuances we couldn’t 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 as a way to address how humans impact the environment.
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.
On view
In Collection(s)