Friday, November 30, 2007

All those squirming, dancing, wriggling particles clearly have something to do with Amy Lin's day job, right? The artist says she gets that a lot.

"People, after they find out that my training's in chemical engineering, they'll be like, 'Oh, okay. It all makes sense.' And they think that they have me figured out."

Wrong, Lin says. Her work generating computer models for Exxon Mobil has less to do with molecular structures than with juggling pure numbers and equations. If she's ever looking at any sort of diagram, she says, "at most, you're looking at very simple representations, like a little outline of a cylinder, representing a tank."

Rather, Lin explains, what's precisely so liberating about dots is that they don't look like anything.

Or do they? According to dealer Zoe Heineman Myers, visitors to Lin's show described some of the pictures as looking like belly dancers in an alcoholic fog, swimmers waving their arms and parents arguing with their teenage daughter. "I think that's really cool," Lin says. "It makes me feel more connected to the people who are looking at the art.