WEBVTT 00:00:18.842 --> 00:00:21.679 KIKI SMITH: There aren’t commemorative  sculptures for, for witches. 00:00:23.600 --> 00:00:26.730 So then I thought oh I wanted  to make these women on pyres. 00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:32.720 Their arms are out like,  like Christ you know saying, 00:00:32.720 --> 00:00:34.429 why have you forsaken me? 00:00:39.040 --> 00:00:41.300 They should be in all these towns in Europe. 00:00:44.080 --> 00:00:47.240 You know, so no one has  needed it in their town yet, 00:00:47.240 --> 00:00:51.560 but (LAUGHS), but, but you know I, 00:00:51.560 --> 00:00:53.080 I thought I can have, you know, 00:00:53.080 --> 00:00:55.000 you know I just make them anyway. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:03.835 Art is something that moves from  your insides into the physical world, 00:01:04.920 --> 00:01:08.932 and at the same time it is just  a representation of your inside, 00:01:09.655 --> 00:01:10.917 in a different form. 00:01:12.920 --> 00:01:14.480 Basically, I think art is… 00:01:14.480 --> 00:01:15.861 it’s just a way to think. 00:01:21.760 --> 00:01:23.640 You know it’s like standing in the wind 00:01:23.640 --> 00:01:27.160 and letting it pull you where,  whatever direction it wants to go. 00:01:27.160 --> 00:01:31.773 And you know things start saying  pay attention to this and make this. 00:01:32.880 --> 00:01:34.240 You know I think when I was in school 00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:36.880 it was very difficult for me to learn how to read. 00:01:36.880 --> 00:01:40.243 And so I just had to learn from looking at things. 00:01:44.040 --> 00:01:48.120 I saw a picture in the  Louvre of Geneviève with the, 00:01:48.120 --> 00:01:51.040 sitting with the uh, wolves and the lambs. 00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:53.580 And Geneviève’s like the savior of Paris. 00:01:53.580 --> 00:01:57.223 And so I drew my friend,  Geneviève as the Geneviève. 00:01:57.720 --> 00:01:59.840 And I cut up and made cartoons out of her. 00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:03.013 And I made sculptures afterwards. 00:02:04.120 --> 00:02:07.725 First I made the Geneviève where  she’s just standing next to a wolf. 00:02:13.480 --> 00:02:17.515 And then I made RAPTURE where the  woman’s walking out of the wolf. 00:02:18.600 --> 00:02:20.115 It’s this sort of resurrection. 00:02:21.200 --> 00:02:25.291 I just have this inventory of images  and I can start mixing them up. 00:02:26.760 --> 00:02:29.139 And if you make them like a kind of character. 00:02:30.440 --> 00:02:32.087 They get to live again. 00:02:32.720 --> 00:02:37.962 They get to have this life  outside of just one version. 00:02:45.640 --> 00:02:47.120 I have one standing Geneviève. 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:50.160 You know I just cut her up over and over and over, 00:02:50.760 --> 00:02:54.080 and reconfiguring it and sort  of smoothing the seams out. 00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:55.640 This could have a little bit of heat going. 00:02:55.640 --> 00:02:57.806 You know just, just to smooth out slightly. 00:03:00.960 --> 00:03:02.400 A lot of times I’d go into the molds 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:04.200 and just make papier-mâché sculptures 00:03:04.200 --> 00:03:06.138 and then you can cut them up really easily 00:03:06.680 --> 00:03:08.520 and you know put them back together. 00:03:08.520 --> 00:03:12.320 Wax is much more complicated  and then we spend you know, 00:03:12.320 --> 00:03:15.247 endless quantities of time trying to fix them. 00:03:20.400 --> 00:03:24.960 It would be much faster in a way just to  cast another person and redo it, but it… 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:29.760 I don’t know, it’s just funny to me to make  it all keep coming out of the same sculpture. 00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:31.324 And this I’ll make in aluminum 00:03:32.680 --> 00:03:35.880 and they’ll go on this sort  of wood, wood crutches. 00:03:35.880 --> 00:03:42.200 So it will kind of lean back uh,  he’ll lean back a bit like that 00:03:42.200 --> 00:03:44.474 and then it will be on this  sort of floating in air. 00:03:55.800 --> 00:03:59.120 To me it’s something interesting  about sculpture or something 00:03:59.120 --> 00:04:02.280 hovering off the ground, or having this, 00:04:02.280 --> 00:04:04.634 like a different relationship to the ground. 00:04:13.155 --> 00:04:18.115 It could be like that. SMITH: And how fast does this set up? 00:04:18.115 --> 00:04:19.040 MAN: About five minutes. 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:20.680 SMITH: Oh that’s great. 00:04:22.420 --> 00:04:25.260 SMITH: It’s going to become a, a dead witch under… 00:04:25.260 --> 00:04:28.600 uh, a pile of wood. But uh, you know so 00:04:28.600 --> 00:04:32.800 and then I thought about the  wicked witch in the WIZARD OF OZ, 00:04:32.800 --> 00:04:34.400 cause she’s under the house. 00:04:34.400 --> 00:04:37.663 So that I’m just under a  wood pile in the backyard. 00:04:48.760 --> 00:04:54.160 When I was a kid, my father had  my grandmother’s death mask. 00:04:54.160 --> 00:04:57.920 She died like about twenty  years before I was born. 00:04:58.960 --> 00:05:01.000 And then uh, when my father died, 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:04.421 my sister Bebe and I made a  death mask of his head and hands. 00:05:08.480 --> 00:05:10.884 And then uh, when my sister died, 00:05:11.720 --> 00:05:15.000 then I went back and I made a  death mask of her hands and head. 00:05:16.469 --> 00:05:20.961 And so I have like three  generations of death masks. 00:05:29.640 --> 00:05:30.869 That’s pretty good. 00:05:34.711 --> 00:05:36.640 Kiki VO: We were a little  bit like the Adams Family. 00:05:36.640 --> 00:05:41.200 We lived in this big house and there was a gravestone with our name in front of the house. 00:05:41.200 --> 00:05:45.820 And you know we had this enormous  sculpture in the back of the house. 00:05:45.820 --> 00:05:48.480 Kiki: And uh, you know we were really unpopular 00:05:48.480 --> 00:05:50.600 and the kids would say I was a witch. 00:05:50.600 --> 00:05:51.880 And you know we were really.... 00:05:51.880 --> 00:05:53.920 And my father had a beard and a Porsche 00:05:53.920 --> 00:05:55.360 and we were really like mortified, 00:05:55.360 --> 00:05:58.200 embarrassed you know that he had a car like that 00:05:58.200 --> 00:06:02.042 and didn’t have, you know,  a big Woody station wagon. 00:06:03.511 --> 00:06:06.200 Kiki VO: We made mostly paper models for him. 00:06:06.200 --> 00:06:09.720 Like thousands of tetrahedron  and octahedron flattened models. 00:06:09.720 --> 00:06:12.040 And then we would sit and  put them together, you know, 00:06:12.040 --> 00:06:16.880 after school every day. In my family  there was always a kind of morbidity. 00:06:16.880 --> 00:06:19.819 My father would always say  that, that it’s Irish Catholic. 00:06:20.520 --> 00:06:23.720 One whole part of our house was all uh, 00:06:23.720 --> 00:06:28.835 my father’s parent’s clothing,  all from you know the late 1800’s… 00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:32.415 and teeth you know, people’s dentures. 00:06:34.720 --> 00:06:39.129 It was all, you know, lots  of death, death everywhere. 00:06:43.320 --> 00:06:45.697 You know I spent a couple  years drawing dead animals.... 00:06:48.680 --> 00:06:53.280 I had this vision of, that I was  supposed to make another Noah’s ark 00:06:53.280 --> 00:06:55.000 but it was of dead animals. 00:06:59.520 --> 00:07:01.000 Kiki VO: This was when my cat died. 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:02.640 I made all these sort of Pietà, 00:07:02.640 --> 00:07:06.473 sort of self-portrait Pietà  of me holding my dead cat. 00:07:17.819 --> 00:07:20.760 And I made like fifty billion  prints of dead animals 00:07:20.760 --> 00:07:26.480 and I think hmm, how come I  own all those prints still? 00:07:26.480 --> 00:07:28.500 My big investment in my future. 00:07:28.500 --> 00:07:32.440 Kiki: Gorgeous, calm down… 00:07:36.938 --> 00:07:40.624 –no you’re supposed  to come down you dumb bird! 00:07:40.624 --> 00:07:41.638 Here… 00:07:48.080 --> 00:07:50.160 I just, I really love printmaking. 00:07:50.160 --> 00:07:52.040 It’s just this scratch, scratchy, 00:07:52.040 --> 00:07:55.684 scratchy motion that I like the best. 00:07:57.017 --> 00:07:59.760 BILL: This blade is so warm it  dries this stuff right away. 00:08:00.980 --> 00:08:05.920 BILL: If you were to understand  that the way she works this, 00:08:05.920 --> 00:08:11.800 this is just normal because every  fiber of her body is about art. 00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:13.960 She can’t do anything but what she does. 00:08:15.520 --> 00:08:19.315 My father taught us to trust our intuition. 00:08:19.880 --> 00:08:22.760 You know my mother would always  say believe your intuition 00:08:22.760 --> 00:08:26.360 that always you get in trouble  when you don’t pay attention to it. 00:08:26.360 --> 00:08:32.440 You know I don’t think in other aspects of  my personal life or daily life I do that, 00:08:32.440 --> 00:08:34.760 but always in my art I do that. 00:08:34.760 --> 00:08:40.400 And sometimes I don’t like where my art is  going or something but I always know that … 00:08:40.400 --> 00:08:43.840 you know and I always go like why  do I have to be making these things, 00:08:43.840 --> 00:08:46.240 or it’s embarrassing or something like that 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:51.709 but I always trust that that’s what  is appropriate for me to be doing. 00:08:54.240 --> 00:08:59.440 I mean for me, I’m just trying to  have as many experiences as I can 00:09:00.200 --> 00:09:03.138 in sort of playing in different forms. 00:09:17.920 --> 00:09:23.779 I love domestic life like, you know  like cupboards and blankets and dishes. 00:09:27.440 --> 00:09:28.800 You know, the first blanket I made, 00:09:29.400 --> 00:09:34.440 she was a witch with her consorts  of all her familiars, her animals. 00:09:35.141 --> 00:09:38.964 Kiki: And then I thought this could  be another female image with animals. 00:09:41.427 --> 00:09:44.427 And I’m a big Virgin Mary fan. 00:09:46.280 --> 00:09:48.640 Catholicism is all about storytelling. 00:09:49.640 --> 00:09:51.840 You know about reiterating  over and over and over again 00:09:51.840 --> 00:09:54.438 these sort of mythological stories. 00:10:04.680 --> 00:10:08.518 Dolls and things like that  are in the realm of fiction. 00:10:12.360 --> 00:10:13.500 I’ll carry them around and then 00:10:13.500 --> 00:10:14.840 I’ll break their leg off 00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:17.320 or their head gets knocked off or something, 00:10:17.320 --> 00:10:20.120 but none of that is really seen in the end at all 00:10:20.120 --> 00:10:23.134 but to me that’s really a  big part about making it. 00:10:24.400 --> 00:10:26.160 This stuff makes me nervous. 00:10:26.160 --> 00:10:27.713 Cause they’re so specific. 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:33.040 Like a story, I don’t want to  be so declarative like that. 00:10:33.040 --> 00:10:37.640 You know...I’d rather make something  that’s very open-ended that like I, 00:10:37.640 --> 00:10:39.440 it can have a meaning to me, 00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:43.550 but then it also can have a meaning to somebody else can fill it up with their meaning. 00:10:43.734 --> 00:10:46.972 Off-camera: Ohhhh!!! Kiki: Oh, it doesn’t matter. 00:10:57.454 --> 00:10:59.520 Hi! How are you? Good! (OVERLAP) 00:10:59.520 --> 00:11:03.120 I have no innate ability for  doing things physically and stuff, 00:11:03.120 --> 00:11:05.760 so I have to really learn and try to do it. 00:11:05.760 --> 00:11:08.804 And, and to me that’s the pleasure in it. 00:11:15.132 --> 00:11:17.233 And a friend of mine’s son died, 00:11:17.640 --> 00:11:22.477 and I went to a Baptist funeral and  I’d never been in a Baptist church. 00:11:24.240 --> 00:11:29.320 And all the women wore nurse’s uniforms. 00:11:29.320 --> 00:11:30.680 All the ushers. 00:11:30.680 --> 00:11:32.901 And they stood there with Kleenex boxes. 00:11:34.144 --> 00:11:38.675 It was so moving to me to see like god’s nurses, 00:11:40.280 --> 00:11:43.080 you know like these women  there like just with Kleenex. 00:11:43.080 --> 00:11:45.425 Like it was so simple and so beautiful. 00:11:48.680 --> 00:11:50.840 And I thought about like, like saints, 00:11:50.840 --> 00:11:53.668 like little saint sculptures  or something like that. 00:11:57.240 --> 00:11:59.240 Kiki VO: I also to make each one unique. 00:12:00.920 --> 00:12:05.000 The more you manipulate it the  more actual life you put into it. 00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:09.000 I think people don’t like it if you say 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:15.360 you don’t have any genetically  innate ability for making things— 00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:17.520 they go, oh no, that’s not true—you do. 00:12:17.520 --> 00:12:20.100 People have this fantasy that artists are, like, 00:12:20.100 --> 00:12:24.720 creating or having this inspiration all the time 00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:28.560 and so for me I think what  I like about this is work. 00:12:28.560 --> 00:12:32.840 You know like ninety percent of  it is that you have to come here 00:12:32.840 --> 00:12:36.726 and file out your bad  mistakes and stuff like that. 00:12:37.223 --> 00:12:37.920 Or it gives you 00:12:37.920 --> 00:12:42.400 this enormous freedom in just filing 00:12:42.400 --> 00:12:44.400 and doing things like that for hours on end. 00:12:44.400 --> 00:12:46.092 Like I always know what to do. 00:12:46.680 --> 00:12:49.000 I never have, like I never  have a moment in my life 00:12:49.000 --> 00:12:50.040 when I don’t know what to do. 00:12:50.040 --> 00:12:53.447 I always know there’s some filing to do, you know.