I used to unwind the wire tags that labeled the crates of vegetables and took the fine brass and steel wires and braided and twisted them together to make bracelets, rings, and figures.
I think you have to teach kids to work, and you can only teach them to work if you work... I can't delegate jobs if I'm not doing it.
I am able to take a wire line and go into the air and define the air without stealing from anyone. A line can enclose and define space while letting the air remain air.
A lot of women wrote to me. Some wrote me long letters on the meaning of the circle and about mythology and about motherhood and the significance or the symbolism of the mermaid and the frogs and the turtles.
I spent three years there and encountered great teachers who gave me enough stimulation to last me for the rest of my life - Josef Albers, painter; Buckminster Fuller, inventor; Max Dehn, the mathematician, and many others. Through them, I came to understand the total commitment required if one must be an artist.
We used to make patterns in the dirt, hanging our feet off the horse-drawn farm equipment. We made endless hourglass figures that I now see as the forms within forms in my crocheted wire sculptures.
Sometimes good comes through adversity. I would not be who I am today had it not been for the internment, and I like who I am.
I laugh with the sun, and mist that tries so hard to seduce the mountains.
An artist is not special. An artist is an ordinary person who can take ordinary things and make them special.
All my wire sculptures come from the same loop. And there's only one way to do it. The idea is to do it simply, and you end up with a shape.
