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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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Kiki Smith
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: January 18
Artist
Illustrator
Installation Artist
Painter
Performance Artist
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Visual Artist
Nürnberg
Ḳiḳi Smit
Body
Taking
Intensive
Little
Feeling
Eventually
Thing
Making
Object
Make
Energy
Putting
Things
Feelings
Labor
Like
Art
Physical
Another
Possibility
Littles
Objects

More quotes by 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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Art is a reflection of everything that impacts your life.
Kiki Smith
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Life changes a lot. I guarantee you.
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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Things that are very significant and important to you when constructing an identity when you're younger change.
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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I had stopped making figures, and then I began making images of animals in nature, which was a way to introduce the figure.
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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Making art is a lot about just seeing what happens if you put some energy into something.
Kiki Smith
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The hardest thing is remembering that you have some complicity in the things that happen to you in your life.
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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My support system is simple - people and time. The miracle of other people in your life.
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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I think that objects have memories. I’m always thinking that I’ll go to the museum and see something and have a big memory about some other lifetime.
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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When studio art started being seen as important, I joined Colab, and then I became very involved.
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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I'm in general a nostalgic person, but I don't know if I'm nostalgic for the 80s!
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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Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.
Kiki Smith