Art project for explorers’ route taking shape

LEWISTON – Renowned artist Maya Lin is working on designs for a new piece at Chief Timothy Park, and Nez Perce tribal members say they are looking forward to seeing her vision take shape.

Lin visited the island park eight miles west of Clarkston, Wash., last month to discuss her ideas with several tribal members, including Tribal Executive Committee member Wilfred Scott and traditional spiritual leader Horace Axtell.

“She’s very inquisitive,” Scott said. “She wanted to know what we saw, how we felt, whether we could hear things or had visions. I think she’s got some very deep visions and emotions. She takes a lot of time. She doesn’t arrive at any decisions hastily.”

If the artwork here is anything like what Lin designed at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., it will be extraordinary, Axtell said.

“From what I’ve seen and heard of her plans, and the site she chose, it seems like a good project,” he said. “It’s out there where you can see the beautiful hillsides in all directions and it’s by the river, and the river is important for many things. The land is important to what the (Nez Perce people) want to describe about the history of this country, especially the place where the Nimiipuu people had roamed and lived before any other people came to Nez Perce land.”

Nimiipuu is the Nez Perce word for their tribe.

Lin was commissioned by the Confluence Project to create seven public art projects along the route taken by explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, stretching from Clarkston to the Pacific Ocean. The nearly $19 million project commemorates the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and the projects are slated for installation in 2005 and 2006.

Lin’s work will be displayed at the park’s natural outdoor amphitheater. It will help tell the history of the Nez Perce, a tribe that provided key assistance to the Corps of Discovery. Plans call for a field of native camas lilies and designs and quotes from Indian and expedition journals. Lin has also proposed a lookout point on the western edge of the island.

“I think she sees a lot of things in the land and nature that a lot of people don’t visualize,” Scott said. “It’s quite amazing how she can point out different things and how they flow together.”