''Above and Below'' is an

installation Installation may refer to: * Installation (computer programs) * Installation, work of installation art * Installation, military base * Installation, into an office, especially a religious (Installation (Christianity) Installation is a Christian li ...

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

artist

Maya Lin Maya Ying Lin (born October 5, 1959) is an American designer and sculptor. In 1981, while an undergraduate at Yale University, she achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned Vietnam Veterans Memoria ...

, the designer of the

Vietnam Veterans Memorial The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a U.S. national memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring service members of the U.S. armed forces who served in the Vietnam War. The site is dominated by two black granite walls engraved with the names of those s ...

in Washington, D.C. It is on display at and owned by the

Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It i ...

located in

Indianapolis, Indiana Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Mari ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. The artwork was inspired by

underground water Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated ...

systems in

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

Description

At the sculpture hangs from the ceiling of the Museum's Fortune balcony which is accessible by the

Asian Art The history of Asian art includes a vast range of arts from various cultures, regions, and religions across the continent of Asia. The major regions of Asia include Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia. Central Asian art primarily c ...

gallery. It consists of different thicknesses of black painted wire

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...

tubing strewn together in a flowing-like manner as if to depict a river hanging above the viewers head. ''Above and Below'' is visible from the 3rd floor galleries and the 4th floor windows.

Acquisition

In 1990 the IMA moved their

Asian art The history of Asian art includes a vast range of arts from various cultures, regions, and religions across the continent of Asia. The major regions of Asia include Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia. Central Asian art primarily c ...

galleries to the third floor which featured a balcony overlooking the Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres. The IMA's Jane Weldon Myers Curator of Asian Art Jim Robinson sought to showcase Asian art on the balcony and immediately thought of Lin. The size of the . x

balcony A balcony (from it, balcone, "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. Types The traditional Maltese balcony is ...

caused curator and artist alike to struggle on what could be created for the space. At first Lin thought about creating an artwork for the

floor A floor is the bottom surface of a room or vehicle. Floors vary from simple dirt in a cave to many layered surfaces made with modern technology. Floors may be stone, wood, bamboo, metal or any other material that can support the expected load ...

of the balcony then she decided to create her installation for the ceiling which would unify the Asian Art and

contemporary art Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...

galleries. The sculpture was purchased with funds from William L. and Jane H. Fortune with Maya Lin overseeing the installation. In 2008 a new stone floor was installed on the balcony, with stones selected by Lin.

Design and construction

Design

Maya Lin is known for her major installation works which incorporate

terrain Terrain or relief (also topographical relief) involves the vertical and horizontal dimensions of land surface. The term bathymetry is used to describe underwater relief, while hypsometry studies terrain relative to sea level. The Latin word ...

and

topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...

– inspirations that assisted in the creation of ''Above and Below''. After years of struggling with the balcony space and lack of topographical landscaping in central Indiana, Lin received a suggestion from an assistant from Indiana stating that "there isn't that much above ground, but did you realize there are these incredibly long

underground river A subterranean river is a river that runs wholly or partly beneath the ground surface – one where the riverbed does not represent the surface of the Earth. It is distinct from an aquifer, which may flow like a river but is contained within a per ...

systems?" Lin decided to create an underground river system out of

wire Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample diameter 40 mm A wire is a flexible strand of metal. Wire is c ...

, despite telling the IMA she was creating a

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

rubber Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, and ...

. Lin and her team researched the

Bluespring Caverns Bluespring Caverns is a cave system located in Lawrence County, Indiana, approximately 80 miles (128 km) south of Indianapolis. The cave system is a karst and river type cave formation and drains a 15 miles² (38.8 km²) sinkhole plain ...

, the Lost River, and the White River. Lin visited the Caverns and worked with

U.S. Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and ...

scientists who created an

ultrasound Ultrasound is sound waves with frequency, frequencies higher than the upper audible limit of human hearing range, hearing. Ultrasound is not different from "normal" (audible) sound in its physical properties, except that humans cannot hea ...

map of the tributaries for the artist. Lin said that "I don't think people really understand how intricate and beautiful some of these systems are." The sculpture seeks to "recreate the experience and feeling" of the underwater landscapes through use of various thickness of wire. Three-fifths of the artwork depict the Bluespring Cavern with the last two sections depicting what is beneath the

water level Water level, also known as gauge height or stage, is the elevation of the free surface of a sea, stream, lake or reservoir relative to a specified vertical datum.ISO 772: 1996. Hydrometric determinations – Vocabulary and symbols. See also * ...

in the cave.

Construction

''Above and Below'' was fabricated at Walla Walla Foundry in

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered on ...

utilizing the

bathymetric Bathymetry (; ) is the study of underwater depth of ocean floors (''seabed topography''), lake floors, or river floors. In other words, bathymetry is the underwater equivalent to hypsometry or topography. The first recorded evidence of water de ...

data gathered from the river bottom and cavern ceiling. Lin's studio translated the data into a collection of contour curves and then sent them to the Foundry. The aluminum tubing was carefully bent to match the computer-generated templates created by the studio then hung within the Foundry. The artwork was then disassembled and shipped to the Indianapolis Art Museum and installed in the course of a

freezing Freezing is a phase transition where a liquid turns into a solid when its temperature is lowered below its freezing point. In accordance with the internationally established definition, freezing means the solidification phase change of a liquid o ...

cold week on the outside balcony. Lin has created other artwork installations which she describes as "drawing in space" including '' Where the Land Meets the Sea'' (2008) in the collection of the

California Academy of Sciences The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 ...

Reception

Art historians at the IMA have described the piece as being easily placed within the

minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...

and

postminimalist Postminimalism is an art term coined (as post-minimalism) by Robert Pincus-Witten in 1971Chilvers, Ian and Glaves-Smith, John, ''A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art'', second edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. ...

tradition due to artists of those movements bringing landscape and nature into the gallery through exploration of environments on a larger scale.

References

External links

''Above and Below''
from the IMA's website.
''Wide Awake in Walla Walla''
from the IMA's blog. {{IMAart, state=expanded Sculptures of the Indianapolis Museum of Art Outdoor sculptures in Indianapolis Environmental art Installation art works Topography 2007 sculptures Aluminum sculptures in Indiana 2007 establishments in Indiana