Quote

You can have fantasies about having control over the world, but I know I can barely control my kitchen sink. That is the grace I'm given. Because when one can control things, one is limited to one's own vision.

Kiki Smith

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Kiki Smith
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: January 18
Artist
Illustrator
Installation Artist
Painter
Performance Artist
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Visual Artist
Nürnberg
Ḳiḳi Smit
Vision
Fantasies
Given
Barely
Things
Sink
World
Kitchen
Limited
Fantasy
Grace
Control

More quotes by Kiki Smith

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I like Betsy Ross as a model, too, the quilting bee, sitting around with your friends making art, asking what they think, so that you get the benefit of everyone's opinions and so it's not just about you in your you-dom.
Kiki Smith
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I like that feeling when you’re making art, that you’re taking the energy out of your body and putting it into a physical object. I like things that are labor-intensive : you make a little thing and another little thing and another little thing, and eventually you see a possibility.
Kiki Smith
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Many people don't have relationships to their siblings in adulthood, or they have superficial ones. It's sort of unfashionable, particularly in America, to be close to your family.
Kiki Smith
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When you get older, you're running out of time. You care more about trying to stay on the planet a little longer, so you can learn how to draw better!
Kiki Smith
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Things that are very significant and important to you when constructing an identity when you're younger change.
Kiki Smith
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It is very different when you age. The things that are significant, or what drives you, or the physical experience of being driven, changes over time.
Kiki Smith
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The point of art is that it always has the necessity to expand because people are inherently expanding.
Kiki Smith
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Making art is a lot about just seeing what happens if you put some energy into something.
Kiki Smith
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I got into animals by drawing hair follicles. I liked drawing hair, and from that I got into feathers and fur, then into images of animals. The patterning is the same, but the proportions of the body change from one animal to the next. A lot of it is just geometry and consciousness.
Kiki Smith
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Prints mimic what we are as humans: we are all the same and yet every one is different. I think there's a spiritual power in repetition, a devotional quality, like saying rosaries.
Kiki Smith
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My support system is simple - people and time. The miracle of other people in your life.
Kiki Smith
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When studio art started being seen as important, I joined Colab, and then I became very involved.
Kiki Smith
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It’s one of my loose theories that Catholicism and art have gone well together because both believe in the physical manifestation of the spiritual world.
Kiki Smith
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Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.
Kiki Smith
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I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too.
Kiki Smith
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It was a very economically depressed time [the 80s] and because of that, there was a lot of space. Everything was relatively dilapidated, and one could live on a pretty low income. One could live well below the poverty line and not suffer immensely.
Kiki Smith
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Art is a reflection of everything that impacts your life.
Kiki Smith
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In our family, there wasn't anything else besides art. Nothing else in the world existed. My father never spoke about going to a movie or listening to music, other than my mother's singing.
Kiki Smith
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Some people think or expect that you should make the same kinds of art forever because it creates a convenient narrative... I want my work to embody my inherent contradictions.
Kiki Smith
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I'm not moving from an ideological standpoint. Sometimes I'm trying to make my life better. Sometimes I'm trying to make my life worse! I'm trying to find a happy medium that I can make some sense of.
Kiki Smith