Alicia Dillard: Pattern and Texture Artists-Maya Lin

This piece by Maya Lin immediately captured my eye. The first thing that I noticed in this piece was the glare off of the glass pyramid. The light appears to be bound to the center of the pyramid and only a trickle of rays make their way down to the bottom of the pyramid and onto the sand. This reminds me of the beginning of an avalanche when only a trickle of the snow starts falling and then all of a sudden the movement becomes faster and faster. The second thing, about this piece, that I found interesting was the texture of the sand. There are various and evenly spaces curvilinear lines engraved into the sand. Also some of the sand has been raised to form small mounds. The raised sand and the curvilinear lines give me an impression of continuous motion—the continuous motion of the avalanche one it gets started. The lines appear to change their direction of motion depending upon which sand mound they are on; this is similar to the chaotic nature of an avalanche.