Artist's Statements

1957 (Edited by the artist in 1960)

To a great extent, the success of an artist in today’s society might still be a matter of building a better mouse trap.

1966

In some works it is my intention to develop the kind of forms nature might create if only heat and steel were available to her.

1967

Everything that exists, natural or man made, contains some sculptural quality or property.

1987 | African Art

The complex variety and vitality of the forms I began to surround and involve myself with led me to some interesting discoveries . . .

1987

One of the central themes in my work is the reconciliation of the organic and the industrial.

1989

Public sculpture responds to the dynamics of a community, or of those in it, who have a use for sculpture.

1998

My own use of winged forms in the early ’50s is based on mythological themes, like Icarus and Winged Victory.

2001

I have always been interested in the concept of freedom . . .

2011

I like working with my hands, making things and holding things.

2021 (Compiled from notes written 2001–21)

I am interested more than anything else in being a free person. To me, that means that I can make what I want to make, regardless of what anyone else thinks I should make.

2022

As a sculptor in time, place, in space, and alone, sculpture should seem to have grown here and also to have been built here.