Sculptors From The United States

"My own use of winged forms in the early ’50s is based on mythological themes, like Icarus and Winged Victory. It’s about, on the one hand, trying to achieve victory or freedom internally. It’s also about investigating ideas of personal and collective freedom. My use of these forms has roots and resonances in the African-American experience and is also a universal symbol. People have always seen birds flying and wished they could fly."

"When I enlarge pieces, however, I consider myself to be re-creating the piece in full scale rather than simply copying a small piece. This process of re-creating the piece in the larger scale gives the full-scale work a spontaneity and it keeps the process more open and alive for me as a sculptor through the opportunity to re-experience the ideas that gave rise to the initial subject. . . ."

"I have always been interested in the concept of freedom on the personal and universal levels: political freedom, freedom to think and to feel. As an African American living in the United States, obviously issues like segregation laws, the civil rights movement in the 1960s or South Africa have been on my mind when I have dealt with the concept of freedom. But freedom also relates to my career as an artist: freedom of mind, thought and imagination. On the artistic level, freedom was a significant principle in the earlier art movements, such as Surrealism or Abstract Expressionism. More recently, public art focuses on the issue of universal freedom."

"Imagining a world without racial hierarchy, I work as if race did not exist. Look the world over, learn, enjoy, luxuriate, dream large, expansive dreams of a glorious future for ourselves and all mankind. Then, we turn our attention to what is humanly possible."

"I’ve come to see the different metals as providing a palette. Stain-less steel and aluminum being sort of cool, bronze and Cor-Ten steel being warm and having, obviously, a variety of hues and colors depending on the heat and the patina one might use. This potential of a rich palette of colors and textures contributes to an ease of developing within the metal the kind of ideas that I seem to have."

"His sculpture has been hailed as the work of a master."

"For me to be able to work in Richard's studio and see the master work was such a special moment that helped set a foundation for my life and success."

"A sculptor can be thought of as the sort of person who can reduce impressions of things, responses, and ideas about things into sculptural forms."

"The history of Black people in the United States of America, no one needs to be reminded, has been constantly marked by rejection and rupture. Thus, in his art, from the outset, Hunt has focused on alternative possibilities, such as redemption and freeing ourselves from the manacles of history. It is time that we honor his vision."

"I am the thinking person’s sculptor, joining metal manipulation to meaningful expression."

"One of the central themes in my work is the reconciliation of the organic and the industrial. I see my work as forming a kind of bridge between what we experience in nature and what we experience from the urban, industrial, technology-driven society we live in. I like to think that within the work that I approach most successfully there is a resolution of the tension between the sense of freedom one has in contemplating nature and the sometimes restrictive, closed feeling engendered by the rigors of the city, the rigors of the industrial environment."

"The creation of a sculpture can be considered the process by which a sculptor demonstrates to himself whether or not he is creating a sculpture."

"My sculpture begins and ends with what can be done with metal. Between the beginning and end are other considerations. The drama of the process of each weld involves a change of state from solid to liquid and back to solid. Repetitions of this process bring about construction, a new constellation of the real and the imagined, ruminations in metal. The material basis of my sculpture is metallic opportunities. Bringing pressure to the right points, I draw the aesthetic out of the industrial process. To me, metal is alive. The forms tell their own story—how they resisted the torch and hammer. From the mill through the studio to the gallery, park, or plaza, the sculptor’s challenge is to bend the metal to his wishes, hammer it into his vision."

"If you look at the larger historical evolution of architecture and domestic spaces, our homes are increasingly segregated and compartmentalized. It was the norm when I was growing up for each child to have his own bedroom. This is something that is historically quite new. I often wonder if it is the reason why it’s so difficult for adults of my generation, and those since, to cohabitate or have close interpersonal relationships. I believe that we have become so successfully individualized that it is difficult for us to live collectively."

"How to interface with the public is an ongoing problem in my work. I am always looking for a function that my work can play. There has to be a reason for it."

"Really good art simultaneously reveals both good and evil. It brings up complicated questions rather than proposing smug answers."

"One of the problems that I have with the way the art world is structured is that there is this idea amongst artists that they have to wait for permission or validation. It makes no sense to me. It’s so interesting when you find artists who are making work, and who are putting it directly in the world."

"Much of the movement for sustainable living is just another form of commoditization, which simply creates new levels of desire. I see many advertisements for people to get new and expensive eco-friendly products, but little of the current mentality has to do with thinking about actual needs. Do you really need a car? Do you need all the clothes? Do you need a new computer every two or three years?"

"What I was responding to more directly was the idea of having limitations. And that's something I have come back to in my practice. There's a lot of rhetoric about freedom out there, but ultimately, most people feel more free when there are certain parameters, and I think we are really unaware of that. We are always trying to abolish parameters and abolish rules. But actually, rules can be constructive sometimes. They can catalyze creative impulses."

"You have to learn to feel confident about the prospect of failing, because it's so inevitable."

"I am fascinated at how the things that set us free are also the same things that oppress us; you could say that the concept of the deserted island is both our greatest fantasy and our greatest fear."

"There are so many versions of communes; it's not just one thing. But I don't think shared-property communes work. I think shared-labor communes work, versions of that that make sense."

"It’s good to have space to think. It’s in the empty moments when you’re the most creative."

"the hard part is the demand for travel, the demand to produce, and you know, (the demands) of getting too caught up in the art-world hierarchy and not keeping track of what the real goal is. I think everyone struggles with that."

"I think what I'm trying to say with my work is that when you look at all of the norms and assumptions about daily living, how many of these are arbitrary and made up? I'm trying to show there are other ways of doing things, not just my way or that way. (I'm showing) there are oppositional ways of living, and I'm breaking that open a bit but with the assumption that people would see the flaws in my proposal and maybe come up with their own."

"What I've been seeing going on -- and it's exciting that it might be changing even though it will be painful -- is this whole culture driven by consumption on every level. Not just monetary consumption, but consumption of experiences and time. I feel that as a culture that most of us are incapable of slowing down and having a real experience. You keep thinking that if you get another house or take another vacation or that if you make more money, that it will free you up. But it becomes a larger and larger web of entrapment."

"Teaching is a way for me to have dialogue with other artists who are completely engaged."

"Bendib is an equal-opportunity skewer. The more a subject or victim is ignored by the mass media, the more he infuriates, informs, and intensifies the reader's attention. Cartoons need to jolt. Bendib obliges page after page."

"(Bendib) presents a perspective that I think is simply lacking in any meaningful way in the mainstream American media, he brings a cultural and nuanced understanding that goes a long way in helping Americans understand the Middle East."

"Khalil Bendib, with a few ingenious strokes of his pen, gets to the heart of the issues of our time. His cartoons are in the greatest tradition of American political humor, with that combination of wit and intelligence so needed in the struggle for justice."

"Humor is often born out of pain, misery, or anger. ..Humor for people like me functions as a way to maintain our sanity. It also serves to sweeten the bitter pill of truth that I try to administer to readers who are sometimes reluctant to be challenged in their political beliefs. First you read, then you catch yourself wondering why this is funny, and then realize that the joke actually makes a good point that you may not have thought of. Humor is there to disarm and deconstruct conventional wisdom and preconceived ideas."

"I’m an idealist and an optimist: all my political work is aimed at helping usher in a better world. I believe that political cartooning should be almost a form of activism, not just idle commentary for the sake of commentary."

"I never start from a drawing, as some people imagine. I always start from a precise idea that I mull and perfect until the cartoon is ready to be drawn. This is not conceptual or performance art. There is little room for improvisation, and every barb is premeditated. You decide what topic you’ll tackle, zero in on the absurdity contained within, find a gag, a symbol, or a pun to encapsulate it and then—and only then—draw to the best of your ability."

"Because of my ethnic background, the Israeli occupation of Palestine is a huge issue for me—it hits me very hard on many different levels."

"The common denominator between all my cartoons is rebellion against blind conformity."

"What I liked so much was their freedom from the constraint on time. When I went back to Morocco it occurred to me that [in the United States] we don’t have this wonderful calm. They are daydreaming, what we would call in the west, ‘wasting time.’"

"If you go to my website [www.bendib.com], you’ll see that my slogan is “The Pen is Funnier than the Sword”—which I really believe. I’m committed to non-violent change."

"It struck me at some point after the Arab Spring and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima—both following closely in the footsteps of the Wall Street meltdown—that epochal changes seemed to be finally happening all around us. The hubris of so many tyrannies, whether they be political, economic, or ecological, was starting to be challenged by large masses of people in so many different countries at the same time, and it occurred to me that the title Too Big to Fail would fit equally all these seemingly disparate juggernauts. I must say I have really enjoyed drawing these cartoons. For the first time in my career, despite the various ups and downs that can be expected in revolutionary times, hope finally seemed to be pointing its nose at the end of the tunnel (to mix metaphors like a pro.)"

"Muslims are stuck between a rock and a hard place: foreigners invading their lands on the one hand and the homegrown menace of Islamic extremists on the other. It’s a catastrophe."

"When I was a lawyer, I quickly came to realize I was more comfortable sitting on the floor, creating sculptures than I was sitting in a boardroom, negotiating contracts. My own personal conflicts and fears, coupled with a deep desire for overall happiness, paved the way to becoming a full-time, working artist."

"This exhibition engages the child in all of us while at the same time highlighting sophisticated and complex concepts. I use LEGO in my art because the toy is accessible. Chances are, you probably don't have a slab of marble or a ceramic kiln at home. But I bet you have some LEGO bricks."

"Art makes better humans, art is necessary in understanding the world and art makes people happy. Undeniably, art is not optional."

"I first learned adjectives through School House Rock. I learned how to count to ten through Sesame Street. I learned about gravity through my Slinky. Imagine if a child learns about art history through LEGO!"

"Swim against the current! Follow your own path! Find the courage within!"

"Create what you see. Create what you feel. Create what you have never seen. Just create."

"My favorite subject is the human form. A lot of my work suggests a figure in transition. It represents the metamorphosis I am experiencing in my own life. My pieces grown out of my fears and accomplishments, as a lawyer and as an artist, as a boy and as a man."

"I carry a sketch pad with me wherever I go. Many of my works center on the phenomena of how everyday life, people and raw emotion are intertwined. I am inspired by my own experiences, the journeys I take and the people I meet."

"We are sneered at for not being the social and intellectual equals, after sixty years of Western civilization, of people with thousands of years of this same civilization; yet when we set out to try to lessen the distance between us we are treated as if the attempt were a crime. Why not give us the chance to try? Are some white people really afraid that we might succeed?"

"I have created nothing really beautiful, really lasting, but if I can inspire one of these youngsters to develop the talent I know they possess, then my monument will be in their work."

"I hear so many complaints to the effect that Negroes do not take advantage of the educational opportunities offered them. Well, one of the reasons why more of my race do not go in for higher education is that as soon as one of us gets his head above the crowd there are millions of feet ready to crush it back again to that dead level of commonplace thus creating a racial deadline of culture in our Republic. For how am I to compete with other American artists if I am not to be given the same opportunity?"