Children run through Storm King Wavefield at Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York.
As children, Maya and her brother played on the hills behind their house. “A strong respect and love for the land exists throughout my work,” says Maya. “I grew up surrounded by woods. I loved that landscape. The privacy.” There were three ridges separated by streams and Maya called the middle one the lizard’s back. “It started up from the creek bed, like a tail,” she recalled. “It grew into a long winding ridge, and ended in what to us looked like the head of a lizard.”
That image stayed with her and profoundly influenced her outdoor artwork Wave Field. “When I go out of doors,” said Maya, “I’m literally my father’s daughter. My dad was a ceramicist. I’m sculpting the earth.”
The Wave Field project began in 1993 when Maya was asked to create a sculpture for the University of Michigan’s new aerospace engineering building. It was dedicated to the memory of F. X. Bagnoud, a Michigan graduate who had died flying helicopter rescue missions in Africa.
Maya was eager to pursue her interest in earthwork, and so she accepted the commission. She visited the site and thought about what the building was going to be used for. She wanted her earth sculpture to connect with the classes, such as the mechanics of flight, that would be taught inside the building. Once again she began with research. She wrote,
“Each project allows me to learn about a new subject.”
She talked to professors in the department and read about the way air moves around an object. As she read about aerodynamics, she became intrigued by images depicting turbulence: irregular winds that affect airplanes and give passengers a bumpy ride. One day she came across a photograph that grabbed her attention. It showed a Stokes wave, an example of repetitive water waves. “The image was the one I knew I had been looking for,” she wrote.
Maya sketching a design for Eleven Minute Line, an earth artwork in Sweden that was inspired by the Serpent Mound in Ohio where she grew up.
Maya began making three-dimensional models of the wave in clay and sand. Then she was ready to move on to the actual sculpture. But it was difficult for her to grasp how one water wave begins and another one ends. Maya said, “I spent hours looking at the ocean, trying to see a beginning or an end, but of course there isn’t one.” Her goal was to make the forms appear natural.
Collaborating with landscape architects, she concocted a sandy soil mix that would drain well and hold its shape during Michigan’s rain and snow. Maya didn’t want puddles settling at the bottom of her waves. And then they began to create earthen walls that stood 3 to 6 feet (0.9 to 1.8 metres) high.
In the final weeks of grading, or shaping the angle of the walls, Maya worked with the landscape contractors. “I physically hand-raked and detailed each wave form,” she wrote. In the fall of 1994, grass was planted on the waves, but in order to allow time for it to grow, it would be a year before anyone could visit it.
At last Maya invited students to walk through Wave Field and become part of the sculpture. “Its scale is such that you can sit in a wave, curl up, and read a book if you like,” she told them. Kids love to climb over the waves and play games. Families have picnics. And viewed from ground level or classrooms above, the work appears to change its shape as the sunlight casts different shadows throughout the day.
Maya outdoors drawing at the site of Storm King Wavefield.
A professor and students relax in the waves of Wave Field, University of Michigan.
Maya continued to be fascinated by land sculpture. In 2005 she designed Flutter for the Federal Courthouse in Miami, Florida. Flutter, the second in her series of earth waves, is based on sand patterns underneath the ocean waves.
The third and largest work in the series is Storm King Wavefield, located in the Storm King Art Center, a vast sculpture park in Mountainville, New York.
After being commissioned to design an earth sculpture there, Maya visited the park. She saw an eleven-acre gravel pit. The gravel had been used in creating the New York State Thruway and other projects in the park, and grass was starting to grow on the surrounding hillside. Maya responded immediately. She liked the idea that the project would involve environmental work as she restored the pit.
Maya made sketches and calculations. Then construction began on July 15, 2007. She teamed up with landscape architects and used gravel from the pit as well as more rock and topsoil to construct rolling rows of waves. Maya drove up from New York City every week to check on the piece’s progress and to shape it exactly as she wanted it.
Maya directing the earthmover during construction of Storm King Wavefield.
Storm King Wavefield consists of seven rows of grassy waves. The waves have the same scale as an actual set of waves, some as high as 15 feet (4.5 metres), more than twice the height of an adult. Maya helped with almost every aspect of the work except for operating the bulldozer. The final step was planting warm-weather grasses on the four and a half acres of waves.
In July 2008 the piece was finished and open to the public. Visitors can behold Storm King Wavefield from a tram ride on the road, or they can climb uphill along a path to capture incredible views. “Amazing!” is a comment often heard at first sighting, for the linked curves really look like cresting ocean waves. Maya said that walking through the earthwork gives a person an experience similar to being at sea. “It is initially disconcerting,” wrote an art critic who felt a little seasick as he strolled along Storm King Wavefield even though he was on land.
Storm King Wavefield echos the rolling hills that surround it and changes with the seasons.
The work changes dramatically through the seasons. In the spring and summer patches of buttercups and clover bloom alongside the green mounds, adding color. And in winter the waves turn white as they are covered with snow. Maya said,
“What I’m trying to do is allow you to pay attention to beautiful forms in nature.”
