People From Chicago

"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."

"Everything that exists, natural or man made, contains some sculptural quality or property."

"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."

"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."

"Public sculpture responds to the dynamics of a community, or of those in it, who have a use for sculpture. It is this aspect of use, of utility, that gives public sculpture its vital and lively place in the public mind."

"The theme of much of my work can be characterized as a fusion or harmonization of the vital tensions existing between dualities, such as the organic and the geometric, the organic and the abstract, or the past and the present, the traditional and the contemporary."

"I came to see the strength of my own roots and past. The success of the early phase of the civil rights movement, which resulted in voting rights legislation and the breaking down of obvious barriers like segregated drinking fountains and public accommodations, gave one a sense of being able to prevail. What happened after that was chastening, tempering. Another thing, too, is to discover the obvious—that the foundations of American society were built upon the backs of our forefathers."

"The challenges utility brings to the sculptor’s mind and art, are as varied as the people and the sites encountered with each commission. As sculptors in our time respond creatively to the challenges that the opportunities for the greater utilization of sculpture impose, we establish links with the greatest traditions in sculpture, and with the largest and most diverse audience sculpture has ever had."

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

"I am a Chicago artist because I am from this city; I’m a Black artist because I happen to be Black. These descriptions are sometimes useful to other people. But I’m also many other things—a man, a human being, an artist. Artists have a unique opportunity to make a difference . . . to look and work toward the future. Most people, by the nature of their work, have to think about what’s happening now, to serve as kind of custodians of our culture; but artists have the opportunity and responsibility to be forward-looking. We have the job of creating new ideas and visions for the future, and I’m pleased to be a part of that."

"Sculpture is not a self-declaration but a voice of and for my people—over all, a rich fabric; under all, the dynamism of the African American people."

"I am interested more than anything else in being a free person. To me, that means that I can make what I want to make, regardless of what anyone else thinks I should make. My art is about art—embracing a vision of the future that is unlike past futures."

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

"Sculpture is all about hard work and delayed gratification, and mysterious, harmonious, pleasantly jarring, revelatory spatial structures—having good times and bad times at the same time."

"A pivotal figure in 20th century sculpture."

"Richard Hunt's status as the foremost African-American abstract sculptor and artist of public sculpture has remained unchallenged."

"Trees have long been my metaphor, symbolic of my inner and outer growth—the taproot delving deep into my conscious and subconscious, the origins of my art, life, and family; peripheral roots branching out into other communities, cultures, a cosmos of interweaving inter- actions; a trunk and branches reaching up and out beyond their tips, leaves, fruit, falling here and there."

"I like working with my hands, making things and holding things. As a sculptor, I talk about using your head, your heart, and your hands— you think about things, you feel things, and then you use your hands to try to represent what that is, in some material."

"Does becoming a critical thinker make you ever critical? You must stand somewhere on the stone steps of the drama."

"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."

"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."

"Totemic American Sculptor of the 20th Century."

"There were times that were up and down, but I think all through it the sense of what it meant to be a priest and to be called to be a priest was something that kind of grew in fits and starts in different ways. There were times when I was thinking, "Well, maybe I should just leave." There were other times I was pretty certain that this was a call from the Lord."

""Never stay licked", quoted in The Spokesman-Review, February 24, 1929"

""It is not hard to please the public. All you have to remember is that we are all born children, that we all die children and that in-between times we are children.", from the article The Chicago Stadium Organ "Remember the Roar" in The Tracker."

"An artist who works with himself as both raw materials and subject can never transcend either."

"“Ah, ‘The Suffering Critic.’ The work to gladden the heart of any artist.”"

"Killing one man is an existential act. Killing a million would be a historic act, at least to the Bound. Killing them all would be a divine act."

"Critics should never socialize with artists; it’s difficult enough to like their work in the first place."

"“Rye, beef, and mustard. There are some aesthetic verities that transcend reality. The field of gustatory ontology has been much neglected by philosophers.” “So much the worse for ontology,” I said, settling down to lunch with as much grace as I could muster. I really was quite hungry. “So much the worse for philosophers! All this Truth and Beauty stuff is fine, but it obscures the real issues. Rye bread! I try never to create a world in which it cannot be found. One must have an absolute aesthetic criterion to give an anchor to one’s life.” There are worse ones, I suppose."

"(What moves you most in a work of literature?) The joy and tragedy of the passage of time. Which is almost always what I’m trying to write about."

"From a half-open window came the sound of a drinking song, bellowed by male voices to the accompaniment of pounding pewter mugs. Merchants, home from the Bourse and ready to do their best to keep the price of malted barley high."

"I felt a surge of annoyance. The palace was a monstrosity. It had towers, with pennants snapping in the breeze. It had triumphal staircases. It had flying buttresses. It had colonnades. What it didn’t have was structure. It looked like an immense warehouse of architectural spare parts."

"(Which subjects do you wish more authors would write about?) I wish I could hear more about the details and peculiarities of characters’ jobs. Not a generically boring office job, but something terribly specific that we don’t normally get to hear about. I want to enjoy a novel and at the same time learn everything about eel fishing or asbestos removal or typewriter repair. And once in a while I want to read about people who like their work, people whose work isn’t a grind holding them back from self-actualization."

"I’ve had fellow critics tell me that, when they work in Shadow, they stay in the sleaziest fleabags they can find, because that makes the experience more “real.” I don’t find lice more real, in any ultimate sense, than satin sheets."

"“You don’t forget, Mother,” Elam said wearily. “You do it quite on purpose.”"

"We should start with prayer. That's where everything starts. We don't start by talking about ourselves or even examining our consciences. We start by prayer, on our knees. We come to the Lord and ask him to let us see ourselves as he sees us. He's the only one who can. God knows each one of us perfectly, and if we're seeking self-knowledge, we must go to him."

"It's rewarding to have been a bishop. What is important for us all is that we be aware of the presence of God in the present, in this moment and nowhere else, and then accept whatever comes. Then you know that God is present. Live every day conscious of God's love for you and His presence to you. As far as my achievements as bishop of Tulsa, I haven't any! Anything good I've been able to do is done by God. We're merely privileged to be his instruments."

"The shooting of Adam Toledo is more controversial and nuanced. The thirteen-year-old - whose gang nickname was apparently "L'il Homicide - had fired a gun that he was still holding when the police confronted him and his twenty one-year-old accomplice in a dark alley. Toledo threw his gun behind a fence, but it is unclear whether Officer Stillman knew he was no longer armed when he pulled the trigger less than a second after Toledo threw his gun behind the fence, out of the view of the officer."

"the world ended in an alley for a thirteen year old Mexican-American boy when a raging white cop pulled his pistol out and shot this child with both hands raised dead but the ears cut off by the police propaganda office manufactured a different story about the horror committed by a white man with a badge. when the boy was chased into the alley he felt it could be his final breath and the world made in the image of the cop would not call it murder. Adam Toledo died once in that alley and we have died more than a thousand times in the last year at the hands of men and women who don't give a shit about Black and Brown lives. mothers are begging for their children, our night sweats leave us drenched and there is no escaping the hell that carves its initials on our dark backs! fuck, the least I can do is never let your white world forget its sin!"

"The footage shows a young boy, Adam Toledo, standing unarmed in an alleyway with a recently discarded handgun on the ground. Officer Stillman rushes to Adam and screams "show me your fucking hands," and Adam immediately thrusts his empty hands into the air in compliance .838 milliseconds (about five-sixths of a second) after Stillman shouted his demand, Stillman shot and killed Adam."

"Adam's death rapidly became a site of contestation. Community residents, politicians, political pundits, and others expressed personal conjectures on the events that transpired on 29 March. On one end, people vilified him and his family, going as far as blaming Adam for his own death, alleging that the murder by police officer Eric Stillman was justified. On the other end, there were clear attempts at rejecting the stigmatized narrative of victim blaming, and a push for police accountability in the form of an eventual abolition of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) ensued by young people, which called for a defunding of the city's police department and a reinvestment of funds into neighborhoods that have historically experienced gun violence, including from police."

"Toledo appeared to raise his hands right before Stillman fired one shot and then ran to the boy as he fell to the ground. "Shots fired, shots fired. Get an ambulance over here now," the police officer was heard saying in the video. "Stay with me, stay with me," Stillman said. "Somebody bring the medical kit now!" The Chicago Police Department said immediately following the incident that Toledo had a gun in his hand. The gun had been dropped long before Stillman shot Toledo, after Toledo had put his hands into the air... Toledo complied with Officer Stillman's orders, dropped his weapon and turned around, hands up, before the officer opened fire."

"It’s my observation that God usually favors the side with the best weapons."

"“You have no moral compunctions about it?” persisted Batman. “Hell, no,” replied Monk. “As Thaddeus says, if God didn’t want them fleeced, He wouldn’t have made ’em sheep. Words to live by, once you become a carny.”"

"“Whether one is a traitor or a patriot depends entirely upon one’s point of view,” said Paka. “And upon who is holding the weapon.”"

"“A very reasonable attitude,” said Mr. Ahasuerus. “That’s probably why it’s so rare around here,” said Flint."

"“You’re a very cynical man, Mr. Flint.” “That’s one of the reasons you’re on the road to becoming a very rich man, Mr. Ahasuerus.”"

"“Still,” he added, “I thank you for your concern. When the election is over, I will remember who my friends are.” “I just hope you remember who your enemies are before the election is held,” said Beddoes sincerely.”"

"There are a thousand events that must transpire, each in its exact order; a million futures must vanish every nanosecond; and you ask me to explain all this to you? Poor little human, who seeks only a full belly and a fat wallet, who dreams of heroic deeds and grateful maidens, and who is doomed only to become a speck of dust in a galaxy already overflowing with dust."