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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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Kiki Smith
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: January 18
Artist
Illustrator
Installation Artist
Painter
Performance Artist
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Visual Artist
Nürnberg
Ḳiḳi Smit
Way
Contradictory
Complicated
Creatures
Beings
Interest
Certain
Best
Work
Messiness

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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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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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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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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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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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 support system is simple - people and time. The miracle of other people in your life.
Kiki Smith
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Stained glass enabled the modern world.
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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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’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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I'm peripheral in Colab's history because others were involved in media, filmmaking, and music, and I was always a studio artist.
Kiki Smith
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I really love printmaking. It’s like a mystery and you’re trying to figure out how to rein it in.
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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Artists live in unknown spaces and give themselves over to following something unknown.
Kiki Smith
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It's fun, in a way, to explore what's risky in one's life.
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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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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Making art is a lot about just seeing what happens if you put some energy into something.
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