Name: Amy Lin

Occupation: Artist and chemical engineer

Residence: Fairfax


What I want to tell you this piece: I began this piece in January 2007, and it took about three months to complete, which was longer than any other piece I drew that year. I chose the colors before I started and drew a few of the really tiny dots near the center of the drawing, then started making a pattern around them. There have been a couple of my drawings where something came to mind near the beginning and I pushed the drawing in that direction. But for most of them, including this one, I really didn’t know where it was going until I was at least halfway done.

As I was drawing, the blue and orange strings of dots sort of flowed outward. At some point I decided I wanted to have two loops of orange dots facing each other, like two people — the “couple.” The coupled orange loops look like they’re lost or tangled up in the blue dots — but they also look like they’re keeping the blue dots from floating away, almost like constellations. They’re lovers, holding the sky together.