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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

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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
Trying
Mediums
Make
Worse
Life
Happy
Moving
Sense
Better
Standpoint
Find
Ideological
Sometimes
Medium

More quotes by 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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We as beings are very contradictory, complicated creatures that work in our best interest and against our best interest. In a certain way, I want my work to have all that messiness.
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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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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Sometimes your personal life is much more significant. Sometimes your work life is more significant. Friends and family, or sometimes the general population, take precedence.
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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Stained glass enabled the modern world.
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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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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Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.
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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My iPhone has changed my life - I spend hours taking photos of the sidewalk as I walk down the street. I like the casualness, that it's low-resolution.
Kiki Smith
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Life really changes. And it gets lighter, for the most part. You tolerate yourself and others better.
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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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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My support system is simple - people and time. The miracle of other people in your life.
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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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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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