Maya Lin Interview (page: 3 / 9) Artist and Architect	Print Interview

Aside from your parents, were there any other people in your life who inspired you or motivated you?

Maya Lin: I would say there were many influential teachers. A funny phrase comes to mind, it's an awful phrase: teacher's pet. And yes, I was one of those. The other kids probably hated me. That's probably why I didn't have any friends. I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the teachers. I remember this one chemistry teacher, Miss McCallan. I liked making explosives. She liked hanging out. We would stay after school and blow things up.

One time I made this incredible powder, flash powder, and I made way too much of it. And I remember I was working out of a crock that must have been this thick -- walls. And it exploded! I mean it was bad. It was stupid, stupid, stupid of us. And I couldn't hear. Like it was loud. It was louder than a rifle report. And the head science teacher comes in, a very serious man, and he's looking around. And he's going, 'What did I just hear?" And we were deaf at that point. We couldn't hear anything. And we went, "Nothing, nothing. I didn't hear anything. Did you?" And so what you don't realize, I think, is that some of your teachers are actually closer in age to you than you think. And so there's supposed to be this distance, but by the time I was a senior in high school, she was maybe four or five years older than me, maybe a little older. But we had a lot of fun doing that.
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There were other teachers; both my art teachers were just wonderful throughout. I really enjoyed my whole educational process. And it was fun. That's what I actually thought was really fun. So yes, there were many influential people.

Was there anything you were bad in as a student?

Maya Lin: Gym. I failed. In fact, that was the only teacher, I think, that really disliked me, and I disliked her just as much. We won't name her. I was really good at track, but anything else in gym, just shoot me. I was the smallest in my class. When I was little you play that stupid game where they pick teams or you would have to break through the line and nobody would want me on their team because I was half the weight of everyone else. There was no way I could break through the line. From that moment on, anything involving gym was like, "Get me out of here."

Were books important to you when you were growing up?

Maya Lin: I read like a demon. If I'm working on an art work, I tend to daydream when I'm reading so I can't read when I'm working on a few projects. So I would take summer breaks, in between work, and then I would just devour books voraciously. Like one year back from college I think I read nothing but Nietzsche. Another summer was Nabokov.

When you were a kid, what books did you read that excited your imagination?

Maya Lin: The Hobbit, the J.R.R Tolkien series, The Narnia Chronicles, anything that was science fiction, or fantasy related. I have the most obscure science fiction/fantasy collection that you could possibly have. The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peakes, top that! It was actually really awful, but yes, I read it. I think I had shelves and shelves of this sort of pseudo sci-fi, not hard core sci-fi, but sort of in between science fiction and fantasy. That's what I pretty much focused on if I wasn't making something, which I was mostly doing.

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