Visitors to the exhibit, Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., are walking through large bodies of water without getting soaked. The imposing sculptural interpretations of land and sea created by renowned artist Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, currently on display in the exhibit may be of interest to navigators. The forms convey Lin’s talents as both an exacting artist and architect in that she uses grids, maps, satellite images and computer models to recreate aquatic contours. Resulting structures depict the South Atlantic Ocean; the Caspian, Red and Black Seas and, for the locals, the Potomac River.

In Water Lines, (2006) Lin twisted wire to construct an underwater volcanic island found in the South Atlantic Ocean. Working with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, she drew a “line drawing in space” based on computer findings on the underwater Antarctic land mass.

The Bodies of Water series interprets the Caspian, Red and Black Seas into layered Baltic birch plywood as if the seas were frozen into a striated birch ice.

The shimmering Pin River Potomac 2009, formed by hundreds of silver straight pins meticulously positioned by art students, meanders through a model of the mid-Atlantic region.

As sailors, we skim the water’s surface and merely glimpse at what is below with our tools of navigation. Lin translates this one dimension into an all-encompassing third dimension at the Corcoran.

Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes will run through July 12, 2009 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.