sculptors-from-the-united-states

"Mother gathered Three or no more dirty black stones, tossed them to sky that could break what had hardened her ground and without frown or flirt of flower father like grease or butter slipped aside to free her from forty and some more grown men who held."

"A life that is never tasted when girls is at home are arrested. Gold ties, tighten, play her a fool time, time and time and so it can be imagined chocolate drips from tomato clouds will finally lossen and I will stick, sticky in love with freedom as this."

"origin is no place at all and can only be fabricated out of difference, division designed out of exclusion and extraordinary harm. Country as home is a contemporary concept riddled with empires"

"I could never be a Minimalist artist: I am interested in corrupting fine art with everything I wish for. I want adventure and to feel the same sense of command that I imagine an explorer or a scientist would––like a visitor trespassing"

"I get a real charge from ancient Tibetan, Himalayan, and Indian art. I am obsessed by the clouds in Chinese and Tibetan paintings and their representation of strange creatures and mystical worlds . . . Both Eastern and Western references are deposited in the wor"

"After beginning as a painter, I realized that while I was painting or drawing I was actually perceiving the lines and spaces physically and in life-size scale. I was imagining myself in the painting or drawing much in the same way a little girl imagines herself in the doll house with her dolls. This realization of my perceptual translations caused me to build drawings as sculptures…to draw in three dimensional space."

"My major concern with sculpture is with physical and psychological movement in space and its relationship to human scale. My effort is to create forms and colors which cause the mind to dance to unheard music. I feel as if I’m translating the form, tone and movement of sound into physical space and time. My sculptures often read visually as music with crescendos, resting places and rhythmic progressions."

"I have worked for the last 5 years on a concentrated series of figures. Even though they do make reference to something recognizable, I am still working as they were abstract with the same human scale relationships and on the same conveyance of feeling through form. Here I am speaking of the metaphor of the human body to the vessel form, but importantly a vessel that can contain nothing but air. This is how I see myself and others, as outlines or drawings which suggest form but cannot restrain or contain the spirit."

"I joyne with all My friends in the pleasing prospect that Posterity will See, and behold the Statue of the man who was apointed by his Contry, and the voice of the Enlightend Part of Mankind to be the great general to Save the Liberties of the Christian Religion and Stop the Pride and Insolence of old England. and by his truly great and Noble Example in all human Vertues he has Restord Peace on Earth, good Will toward mankind."

"It was, we went to art museums, we traveled through Europe on our way home. We didn’t do any stopping when we went to India, but on the way back, which was better, because by then I was 16 and so I saw a lot of things I wouldn’t have seen if I was just living in Ohio."

"The sculpture department was over in some agronomy building in the basement or something because they had a very old building and, there just wasn’t room for all the classes. Now they have a huge new building. I went to interview someone that we were interviewing as a Dean who was in their Art History department, and their Art department now is in a huge building, it has like 12 floors or something and three floors are devoted just to computers. So it is a very different department now than it was then, but when I was there it was very intimate and you could work there all the time, all day, on the weekends if you wanted to. They had visiting artists. I remember David Smith came one time and spoke to us, and talked to us in our studios and I remember I was complaining to him about something, I can’t remember. I didn’t have enough of something, I was complaining because the school didn’t provide it and he just said, “Well, go get it!” And I said, “Oh yeah.” It just never dawned on me, “Oh yeah! I’m in charge of what I’m doing! If I need something, just go get it!”"

"David got a job teaching at Valparaiso University, which is where he graduated from, that’s in Indiana. And, I did some things. Again, I was kind of back to doing drawings. We were there for a couple years and then moved to California."

"My Friends Write to Me from America that Joseph Wright (my Son) "has Painted a Likeness and also moddel’d a Clay Bust of General Washington which will be a very great honour to My Famaly.""

"I was an artist with many social connections, and – don’t tell! – I may have been a spy. I was born on Long Island, New York in 1725, but by the time I was four I was living in Bordentown, New Jersey. My father was a devout Quaker, and I was passionate about art, especially sculpting, so when I was twenty-one I moved to Philadelphia, the center of American art. I married a fellow Quaker, Joseph Wright, and we moved back to Bordentown, before he unexpectedly died in 1769. But I didn’t give up my art dreams, and along with my sister Rachel, who was also a widow, we started a business making wax sculptures, and soon we had salons in Philadelphia and New York City. I met Benjamin Franklin, and he convinced me to move to London and introduced me to important people who wanted to be sculpted. Things were bad between Britain and its colonies, and I supported the efforts of Prime Minister William Pitt who was trying to reconcile everyone. But at the same time, while my many subjects – including the King himself – were posing, we’d talk openly and honestly about what was going on. If any valuable military or political news came my way, I’d write it in a letter to the Continental Congress, which I would then smuggle out in my wax statues. I also tried to help American prisoners of war who were jailed in England. And at the same time, I also tried to compensate Loyalists for their losses. I wanted to get back to New Jersey, but I died in London in 1786. Nobody knows where I am buried."

"It was1964 and I was pregnant with Eric at that time and so we moved out here and we were in Long Beach for a couple of years before he then got a job at Pasadena City College. By then, well, actually, in Long Beach, I was making sculpture again. As soon as we got to California, things really started to click and when we moved to Sierra Madre and David was teaching in Pasadena, I think one of the really important things for me was that I saw one of Judy Chicago’s smoke pieces. I don’t know if you are familiar with those but she did them in several locations where she would. . . . Well, one that I remember in particular, was at the Pasadena, or, what is now the Norton Simon Museum, around that pool she had people set up colored smoke and so they would light them and then . . . so you just had this ephemeral experience that lasted for what, maybe 30 minutes. So that was my first experience with seeing something that relied on your visual memory. There was nothing left, there was no object. I was quite fascinated with that."

"No, nobody. The families really were . . . my mother’s family lived in Lafayette, Indiana and she came from a really large family, and my dad’s family, were obviously, all farmers. So, there was no role model at all. I think the most sophisticated experience I had was when I was in high school, my freshman and sophomore year, my father was in India with the Point 4 program, and I worked with a woman [whose husband was with the foreign service in Delhi], who was an artist and she had a studio. And I worked with her several mornings a week. So, that became, I suppose, that was my very first real practical experience of what an artist did. She would work in her studio in the morning . . . she would not answer the telephone. Her friends all knew not to call her at certain times, so that was probably my first experience with that."

"I am Impatient to have a Copy of what he has done that I may have the honour of making a model from it in Wax Work—it has been for some time the Wish and desire of my heart to moddel a Likeness of generel Washington, then I shall think my Self ariv’d at the End of all my Earthly honours and Return in Peace to Enjoy my Native Country. I am Sir with gratitude an Respect Your very humble Servnt"

"I started college at Michigan State because I went to . . . two summers before that I had gone to Interlochen Music Camp and they had an art program there. And so, the man who was teaching art was also teaching at Michigan State, so I got interested in going there because of their program. So, my first year, I was I was at Michigan State and then after that I transferred to Ohio State so that I could live at home. My family did not have that . . . it was always a matter of finances to, you know, how you were going to afford to do these things. All beginning art majors, you take drawing, ceramics, painting, and everything. That was my first experience with working three-dimensionally so I was completely hooked. Before that I had, in India, all the work I had done were drawings and paintings, because I was working with [Janet Sewell], and that was all that I knew. Even as a child, I was always drawing. So, it wasn’t until I went to Michigan State and took that ceramics class. There was something about, you know, not just your ideas, but the physical information that is in your body or in your hands or something, that really clicked for me, I liked that a lot."

"Truly hapy are You Sir, to have the greatful thanks of all Europe—with the Prayir of the Widows and the Fatherless—You have my most greatful thanks for your Kind atention to my Son in taking him in to your Famaly to encourage his genii and giving him the pleasing opertunity of taking a Likeness that has I Sincerly hope, gave his Contry and your Friends Sir, Satisfaction."

"What I am interested in doing is helping people see in a particular kind of way and to see what is already here- to sort of move and change things that are already a part of this particular enviornment. I am trying to do that in a very subtle way by saying: well, my human quality is a different kind of organisational quality. For instance the grey piece is laid out in a series of mounds with a grid. Everything else in the landscape is totally random. When the rocks fall, they simply fall and there is no particular design. Whereas I lay my human design on it."

"I most heartly thank my god for Sparing My life to See this hapy day."

"Yes, he was in a graduate student in that program, and that’s how we met. We married right after I graduated and he continued as a graduate TA."

"I grew up in Indiana and my earlier memories were of living on a farm. We lived on my grandfather’s farm in Indiana and actually, it’s interesting, that location was called Sand Hill Farm. My grandfather was Amish and his property was just adjacent to his parents’. So, they had lots of land so they were farmers and that’s where I started. When I was about six years old, I remember some friends of my parents gave my mother and I Christmas presents, and they gave my mother colored pencils and they gave me perfume, and to this day I think they must have gotten it mixed up because I was terribly insulted, I thought, you know, “I’m the artist, I should have gotten the colored pencils!” So, at a very early age, somehow, even though I was living on a farm and had really no idea what it meant to be an artist, I considered myself to be a creative person."

"Well, the art department there was very different than it is now."

"Yes. And my [former husband], David Elder was the T.A. (teaching assistant) for the person teaching the sculpture class."

"I was always doing something with my hands. I never remember buying a Christmas present. I carved angels out of soap and candles, did ‘paper sculptures,’ then went on to silk screening, enamel work, seashell earrings, etching glass bottles, pottery and ceramics.”"

"In addition to creating my own sculpture, I am involved in encouraging communities [to] provide original works of art in less prominent areas of our cities. I believe works of art have the potential of contributing a sense of value to the citizens of a community."

"Every sculptor tries to reveal the character of his subject"

"I'm always delighted when the response to one of my sculptures is favorable, and I know that the response to LBJ has been. I've actually seen people carry on conversations with the LBJ bust, and that's what you want to achieve."

"I too wonder about the attraction of Santa Fe, but damn it, it has something. I have had touches of nostalgia several times. Perhaps it is the sunlight, but there is no question about the fact that there is a great pull. I am more inclined to believe that it is the stimulation of the extremes — in every direction — that we experience there which we miss when away from it."

"I think art is personal to each artist, and so to me it is what my art always has been about. But that’s my choice as an artist. I don’t believe art necessarily has to be any one thing. In fact, if we all felt inclined to have to do that, I think it would be a disaster for art."

"The response is where Lin starts her work as a designer. She creates, essentially, backward. There is no image in her head, only an imagined feeling. Often, she writes an essay explaining what the piece is supposed to do to the people who encounter it. She says that the form just comes to her, sometimes months later, fully developed, an egg that shows up on the doorstep one day. She rarely tinkers with it. She is, in other words, an artist of a rather pure and intuitive type."

"By second or third grade, I was doing my own thing. I still resent being told what to do in any way, shape, or form. I’m sure it’s clinical."

"I tend to make models of a lot of my pieces. I end up making models, and the models get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. I call it the Christmas tree syndrome. You buy a Christmas tree outdoors, you think it’s too small, then you bring it inside and you have to lop two feet off because it’s way too big. If you’re working out of doors, you have to test actual scale, with a paper cutout, with a maquette at full scale, because you need it to feel intimate like a dining table. You have to scale it up just enough so that it will still feel intimate — so it won’t jump to monumental in scale. It has to be bigger than it would be inside because then it would get dwarfed. You can only do that by actually mocking it up."

"Every bowl we ate off was something he made by hand: stonewares connected to nature and natural colors and materials. And so I think our everyday lives was imbued with this very clean, modern, but very warm aesthetic, and that very much influenced me."

"I would hope that artists can offer a different viewpoint, a different way of seeing the exact same data points, but maybe, because we can think a little bit outside of the norm, we can offer a new way of looking at it."

"It’s a bit unusual, as you said, to be working between the architecture, the art, and what I would say is a synthesis, the memorials—they’re problem solving, but it’s very symbolic. You get this triangle; I need to be balanced with those three. They’re all equally a part of who I am. I love how different they are, and yet they’re coming out the same thing, whatever it is."

"I think I’ve always had an activist stance, yet at the same time, the other side of me—and this is where some people just don’t get it, or they’d prefer it if the work was a lot uglier, a lot louder—I have this personality where I just want to put something out that’s a fact and then let you interpret it. It’s almost as if you might barely notice it, you might walk right by it, but you have to pay attention."

"I leave it up to the viewers. If it’s in a museum, if it’s in a gallery, usually I am going to point out something about a river right below your feet or right outside your window. I’m not going to scream it out. If you get a little curious, you can find a little bit more. At times my works are maybe to a fault subtle. For public works, maybe you won’t even notice I was here. I’m not trying to defeat or conquer nature."

"There are a couple of things out there that I really want to do. I’ll tell you one. I want to work in a landfill. I love things that involve adaptive reuse of really degraded places. The sad thing about our current landfills are, you can’t dig a hole into them, because heaven forbid, there’s all this toxic stuff in there. It’s not just that I want to work in a landfill. I would like to help rethink what a landfill could be. What if we didn’t put anything toxic in? What if we composted all our organic matter? So then it wouldn’t be dangerous to plant a tree in it, you wouldn’t have to cap it because you think there’s so much poison in there. What if we could recycle all our rare-earth metals and minerals? It’s a big ask. That’s something I want to do in my lifetime."

"In art, I get to walk into my head and do whatever I want to do, to free up completely. That goes back to my roots in Athens, Ohio, my roots in nature and my feelings of connections to the environment, that everything is coalesced around being inspired by the natural world and reflecting that beauty out to others."

"I have fought very, very hard to get past being known as the Monument Maker."

"If you ever tried to analyze its shape, it's one of the most complex forms. Think about it, it's every compound curve. There's nothing symmetrical about it. It's about looking at something again and then appreciating it. I mean, nature, is so complex."

"She’s just amazing, when you think about what she has done, the work she quietly does in her way. She doesn’t seek attention, but at the same time, people come to her because they know that she will take that opportunity and the gifts, the talent she has and from what I’ve seen, and we all see, that it’ll be remarkable."

"I had been blessed that racism had never really entered into my realm. I get to Denmark and ironically I think they thought I was a Greenlander at times. An eskimo. Because if I get a suntan, I change through different races. Some people think I'm American Indian. When I'm in Mexico, I blend."

"I’ve always been pretty fixated on water. Maybe it’s because it exists in multiple states, and you can never understand it in nature as a fixed moment in time."

"I think art is different. I think you have to be who you are. My art happens to be very integrally linked with my environmental concerns. But to be an artist, you have to be true to who you are."

"The Vietnam War was much more in the main news. I think the rioting was. But I think a lot of the facts hadn't been written into the textbooks because it was current news. From a child's point of view, you're not focusing on the daily news the same way. Anyway, I was stunned at how there was this part of American history. I know now it's absolutely covered in textbooks. But could I offer something out as an information table that would give people a brief glimpse of that era the way I had been, after having looked at this material, been given a glimpse? And of course, the idea is, you look at this. You'll want to study it more. Because the one thing about sculptures, the one thing about memorials is: I can draw you in. I can make you think for 15 minutes, whatever, then it's really about where you go after that."

"I try to understand the "why" of a project before it's a "what." And this might be more pertinent to some of my memorial projects. Memorials are a hybrid between art and architecture because they have a function."

"I value writing. I respect it. I find it the most difficult thing for me to do, but when I'm done I am unbelievably just at peace. If you think about art as being able to share your thoughts with another, writing is totally pure."