Maya Lin burst onto the art and architecture scene in the early 1980s when her design was selected to become the country’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Since then, she has transformed landscapes in environmentally friendly ways and used organic materials to remind us of the fragility of the planet. Now, one of her art installations will be turned into boats.
To highlight a looming environmental disaster, Lin created Ghost Forest, a public artwork consisting of a towering stand of 49 Atlantic white cedar trees that were slated to be cleared as part of regeneration efforts in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. The 40-foot-tall dead and dying trees were installed in New York City’s Madison Square Park, and now that the project is over, pieces of the trees will be reused in a future Lin project. However, a good portion of the trees would have been mulched or turned into shingles, but instead the trees were milled into boards and will be used by the city’s Rocking the Boat program to build wooden boats.
