My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
Maya LinRead
I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a journey of self-discovery and understanding one's cultural identity in relation to art.
Maya Lin expresses a realization that her early aspiration to conform to American ideals overshadowed her inherent Eastern influences in her artistic work. As she matured, she recognized the importance of her heritage and how it uniquely shaped her perspective in art and architecture, highlighting the significance of cultural identity in creative expression.
In practice
This quote can be used during an art seminar to discuss cultural influences in creativity.
My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.
How we are using up our home, how we are living and polluting the planet is frightening. It was evident when I was a child. It's more evident now.
Sometimes you have to stop thinking. Sometimes you shut down completely. I think that's true in any creative field.
A lot of my works deal with a passage, which is about time. I don't see anything that I do as a static object in space. It has to exist as a journey in time.
When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.
That's what happens with writing. Ingredients bubble and cook. Material becomes substance.
A primary function of art and thought is to liberate the individual from the tyranny of his culture in the environmental sense and to permit him to stand beyond it in an autonomy of perception and judgment.
I enjoy playing the band as the band. I 'be' the whole band and I'm playing the drums, I'm playing the guitar, I'm playing the saxophone. To me, the most wonderful thing about playing music is that.
Some couture collections have everything including the kitchen sink! Everything gets thrown on to make it look expensive. I find it grotesque when clothes hit you in the face and there's no room for fault. But I don't expect to turn things around all by myself. I'm not a saint.
But music, don't you know, is a dream from which the veils have been lifted. It's not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself.
It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
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