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URSULA VON RYDINGSVARD:
My work is so labor intensive that often

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I'm doing things that are highly repetitive

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in order to get to the end of 
the piece or of the project.

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It's actually pretty easy to have an image,

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but to realize it is a deep deal.

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Often when you're in the 
process of realizing an image,

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it's going somewhere else.

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If that tangent starts going off in 
a place that feels more exciting,

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that's what I go with.

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I grew up as one of seven children

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in the post-World War II refugee 
camps for Polish people in Germany.

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My parents were extraordinary survivors,

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and my home was one in which 
words were not used very often,

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and in fact anybody that used too 
many words was automatically suspect.

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I drank from the world through visual means.

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That was a huge source of the 
information by which I lived.

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I learned you smile but you ration that.

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You laugh, but not very frequently,

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and really at appropriate times.

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And that working hard was the answer to life.

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I almost think of it as the way 
that the Shakers might live.

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We stayed in wooden barracks,

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raw wooden floors, raw wooden walls

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and raw wooden ceilings so

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somewhere in my blood I'm 
dipping into that source.

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I build everything out of cedar.

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Very neutral. Almost like a piece of paper.

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When we build the sculpture, 
we build it layer by layer.

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I draw the outside lines of each 
of the pieces that you see here.

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The cutters cut them.

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We put them back here.

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We then mark it precisely.

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On the outside--you see some 
of these marks on the outside?

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And on the inside, on the top portions these marks

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are actually the most precise of all

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so that if any one of these pieces 
were to be tossed or to be lost,

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we could find them and put 
them back where they belong.

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We build it and screw it all together.

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And then we take it off layer by layer by layer

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in order to glue it layer by layer.

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The cutters by the way are 
the princes of my studio.

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There are cutters who cut lyrically,

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there are cutters who cut very aggressively,

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and depending on what I need, that's who I use.

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In order to make an organic form you 
need to have many, many straight cuts.

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The surface is a kind of landscape 
that I get carried away with.

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My definition of a landscape 
that could also have to do with

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the kind of psychological landscape 
or an emotional landscape.

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Graphite is a very, very fine 
powder and because it's so fine,

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it's able to get into the pores of the cedar.

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I really put it on in a very hefty way so that

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I really grind it with a brush into the surface.

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And then we scoured the surface to further define

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what I wanted the surface to do

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because that surface is extremely important to me

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in terms of communicating emotionally.

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I never do a model–

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I never do drawings for my works–

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because they close me in.

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Because they limit my options.

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You can't get too predictable.

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You have to have surprises all over the place.

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If for nothing else, then 
just to keep my head going–

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keep my mind alive.

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But I think to have any level of interest

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you have to have some sort of combat, you know,

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that's occurring within the work.

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And anger has been a tremendous 
mobilizing force for me.

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I'm grateful to my anger.

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The confrontation in part lies 
with my struggle with the cedar.

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It's always telling me what it needs to do

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and I think that I'm trying to 
tell it what I want it to do.

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This is a sculpture that I want 
to look as though it's ravaged.

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As though it's been kind of beaten up by life.

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Anything that has to do with chaos is as 
interesting if not more so than order.

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This is a machine that's meant only 
for metal to grind on top of wood

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and what it does is it burns its surface.

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For me, that's what gives it a whole 
other landscape and a whole other depth.

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Mine are definitely not utilitarian objects

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but I learned from that which is vernacular.

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I consider these my drawings.

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They are three-dimensional but 
they're actually quite complicated

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in terms of all of the markings on their surface.

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This is chalk and that's graphite.

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It's made out of wood--out of cedar, obviously–

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but it's still lace because it 
wanders in a way that's very wayward

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and it's very open.

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You can see through it.

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I deliberately, consciously,

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set out to make it feel and look light.

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I love the man-made and nature kind of 
really becoming fused or becoming one.

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For the project at Madison Square Park,

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the urethane bonnet, I wanted a transparent look–

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a look of walls that the light went through.

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I wanted a very agitated surface and the hood that 
is over the bonnet is almost like a little porch.

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It's very erratic and it's very celebratory

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and it needed that translucency of the light.

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I think there were twelve marriages 
that took place inside the bonnet.

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Certainly that part of the 
piece was a big success.

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I do have books that I've written in.

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I use this as a way to talk to myself

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and I write down my dreams,

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documenting them is one of the 
things that makes me feel lighter.

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I draw because it's something that 
I like to do from time to time.

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I've never shown my drawings–

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I'm very shy about my drawings.

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They really are mine.

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I can't help but think right now that

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maybe the best drawings are the 
ones that I leave for a while.

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Let it gestate because as time goes by

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I think it becomes more and more obvious.

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This particular drawing I've 
worked on for I think over a year.

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It's almost like a patchwork quilt you know?

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And I think of these things not really as sewing,

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maybe as cuts that the surgeon then sews later.

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I think of them as a kind of landscape 
that you look at from the top.

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This piece is the most baroque 
piece that I've done in my life.

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It's also the kind of landscape 
you find on a human body.

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The interiors of these pouches 
had a tremendous amount to do with

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defining what the exterior does.

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I want people to enjoy the 
voluptuousness of the piece.

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I want the piece to walk with them.

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I feel that anchoring these 
structures and anchoring these forms

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is a part of the power behind how it speaks.

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Gravity serves an incredibly 
important purpose for me.

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This wall pocket has a flat, flat back

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because it actually can edge up against a wall.

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There's kind of a humbleness to it.

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There's almost an introverted feel that it has.

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I need the inside to be as 
carefully considered as the outside.

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And I have this idea of almost like 
something that would–

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you know, almost like something that a body could excavate from.

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You know, could sort of be 
molded with and then escape from.

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My whole cedar studio is loaded 
with pieces that are unfinished

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and I need all of those things 
in my environment to feed me,

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to give me always options.

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Nothing can exist in my head without opposites.

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The opposites don't have to be complete opposites,

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but they can be things that 
don't ordinarily belong together.

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Within a piece that has tremendous 
amount of agitation and agony,

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there can also be something very hushed

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and very quiet and very lyrical and very humane–

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also within the context of something that 
feels as though it's full of violence.

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That within it one can have 
something that feels humble

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and that feels as though it's capable 
of giving you a "głaskać po głowie" –

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the capacity of petting you on the 
head in a most gentle sort of way.