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[Maya Lin: New York]

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[MAN] It's all about being random, so you can't create any patterns,

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and you always have to switch up the distance--

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you make a couple closer to each other and a couple further away...

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[JAMES EWERT, STUDIO ASSISTANT]

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But for this area, where it's the end of the river and it's really thin,

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it's usually just one pin, so it just varies in one dimension,

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but it can't look like there's a pattern at all.

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[LIN] Generally when people experience something that is, say, a thousand miles long,

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though you see a map and plan, your experience of a certain waterway is what you know.

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It's really hard to understand an ocean.

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It's really hard to understand a river.

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Because, again, they tend to span borders--

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they tend to span so many different zones.

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So it will begin to think of those as, for lack of a better word,

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just a very precious object...

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Begins to get you to think of that river system as something that is much more controlled or finite

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or something that is a singular organism.

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The show in New York will focus primarily in on New York.

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I'm trying to get to understand a place, like New York City,

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What's literally below our feet.

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What used to be there historically, topographically,

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as well as what's there right now.

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So, one of the two things that are anchoring the shows are these very large stone circles.

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And this also will be in the show as a cast recycled silver piece.

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And this is Manhattan.

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This piece is going to be a pin river of the streams that used to be traversing midtown Manhattan,

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west to east.

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I wanted to create another waterway system,

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so this is, sort of, literally the flood zone of Hurricane Sandy.

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And so we're going to turn that into a fairly large pin river.

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I don't know if it's important to anyone else other than me--

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I'm fascinated by it. And I think throughout my work,

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I've tried to reveal aspects of the natural world that you may not be thinking about.

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After Hurricane Sandy, we're becoming to be very aware of our water's edge,

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which is something Manhattan hasn't really focused on.

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I think the discussions right now are: well, if we had not destroyed all the oyster beds--

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the oyster beds were actually there to mitigate a lot of the storm surge.

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Or, if the salt marshes were to combat...they're there as our first line of defense.

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Do we remember that this is what Manhattan used to be,

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and if we remember it, could we restore it back to a fraction of what it's abundance used to be.

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We don't want to break down basic ecosystem services,

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which are cleaning our air, cleaning our water...

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And it's a moral issue.

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One species absolutely doesn't have a right to overrun the planet.

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You know, I'm curious if I'm having an impact.

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As an artist, I don't want to be preachy.

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So I think the sculptures themselves, they've given facts.

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I'm someone who basically loves to mine the facts and stand back.

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If we forget what used to be, then we've lost an ability toreally be sensitive to our surroundings.